For the recording, welcome. We are studying the ACI practice module called Tonglen, the practice of giving and taking, which the Tibetan actually says taking and giving.

It's November 7th, 2025, for the recording.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

Class Opening

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them appear before you just by way of your thinking of them.

They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion. Their wisdom radiates from them. That beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light.

And then we hear them say,

Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way.

Feel how much you would like to be able to help them.

Recognize how the worldly ways we try to help fall short, how wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.

Deep down, we believe this is possible.

Learning about emptiness and karma, we glimpse how it's possible.

I invite you to grow that wish into a longing and that longing into an intention. 

And with that intention, turn your mind back to your precious holy being.

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. 

And so we ask them, please, please, please teach me that. Show me that.

They are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree.

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite, and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create.

We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise. 

Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers,

The great mountain, four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon.

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you.

By this deed, may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratnamandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

may all beings totally awaken for the benefit of every single other.

The Lineage of this Tonglen Teaching

(7:55) We're starting this series of eight classes that is part of Asian Classics Institute practice modules. So these practice modules are two-hour classes, one hour of teaching, sometimes it comes at the start, sometimes it comes after. And one hour of guided meditation, not that we sit for the whole hour necessarily, but learning to do the practice that the practice module is teaching.

Each of these different practice modules is a tool that we then have in our spiritual progress toolbox. Geshe-la has taught us the foundational ones that gives us what we need to make progress on our spiritual path.

Tonglen is a beautiful, important one. The practice of Tonglen will… 

In this series, we'll learn about Tonglen, we'll learn how to do the practice, we'll learn how it works and how it doesn't work, we'll learn where it came from, we'll learn all those details. But more importantly, we'll learn why to do it and how to do it. 

This Tonglen is a practice where we use our breath to pretend that we can help stop somebody's suffering.

It's a practice that we can do on our meditation cushion, and when we get familiar with it, we can also do it spontaneously off our meditation cushion. It becomes this tool that we rely upon when we find ourselves in situations of seeing someone's difficult situation, but not really having anything that we can do to help it. We can always Tonglen.

In my personal experience, like it's not that Tonglen is the fallback, like if you can't do anything else, do Tonglen. My personal opinion and experience is Tonglen first and then try to help in worldly ways, or Tonglen as your worldly way in helping. And we'll see why, I hope by the end of the series here. You'll see, and that I hope that it will serve you as it has served me.

I first met Tonglen practice 10 years before I met Geshe Michael and his teachings. I was studying something called theosophy with a small study group, looking for answers to, like what's reality beyond the material reality? Because I had had an experience that showed me there was reality beyond material reality, but I had no basis for what that was. Theosophy teaches what's common to religions, what's common to cultures with the idea that that must be closer to the truth what's common to all. It was a sweet group. I learned a lot from them.

They wanted to do a service project and they decided, well, let's do a meditation retreat open to the public. One of the women knew this man called Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen from Long Beach, California. We were in Tucson and she said, let's invite Geshe Gyeltsen to come to Tucson. I'd never heard of Tibetan Buddhism. I'd never heard of a Geshe. It's like, great, let's do it.

We held this program and Geshe Gyeltsen came. At that time, his English was very rough, very…, his accent, his Tibetan accent was very heavy, was very difficult to understand. But he taught this practice called Tonglen, a practice of using your breath to take away pain and suffering and to give everybody happiness. Like from my logical side, that's nuts. You can't do that. But something in my heart took to it like a duck to water.

He taught us how to do the practice, and he taught us about refuge, about Bodhichitta. I remember hearing those words, but I completely didn't understand what it was all about. But the practice Tonglen, wow, I loved it instantly. I was a runner back then. So I started doing it as I ran. I did it as I walked. I did it as I drove. Anytime I wasn't directly interacting with somebody else, I was thinking Tonglen, I was Tonglen-ing.

I was watching for miracles in my own life and outside my world, and I didn't really see any that I recall. But, I see now that it was like the beginning of this change in my life that brought me from there to Diamond Mountain, to Great Retreat, to here. And I really attribute it to this Tonglen practice that's not my most prominent practice anymore, but has gotten like sublimated. It's as if it's going on all the time in the background.

I just figured out in my computer that it was getting all clogged up because it had something running in the background. I got in there and I deleted it, and now my computer is so much happier.

But it's like I've got Tonglen running in the background and I'm so much happier, right? That I don't wanna delete it even if it is somehow clogging. It's not clogging anything, right? It's helping.

Of course there's nothing in the Tonglen that can make miracles, which means it can help us in deep ways. Especially can help us in deep ways the better we understand how it works, why it works, how it doesn't work, which is how it can work. Always that riddle, that koan about emptiness and karma.

Geshe Gyeltsen, he was a Gelugpa trained, a monk who was amongst that last group of having been formally trained in Tibet before he escaped in 1959. He went and finished his Diamond Way training in India in the community in exile at the Ganden Monastery in exile.

Then he got sent to England to serve the Tibetan community in exile there, where he taught the children Tibetan culture and Buddhism. He got such a good reputation as a teacher that adults asked him around different areas of the world to teach, and he ended up in California.

Meanwhile, while he was in England, he disrobed. So he was a monk from when he was seven. He joined the monastery at seven years old. He took the Geshe training. He got fully ordained. When he went to England, he gave back his ordination vows. He got married, he had a child, a son. But then not too long after, he divorced and retook his ordination vows and established centers. His main one was in Long Beach, California, which was the connection with our theosophy group.

He passed in 2009. He was an extraordinary, beautiful teacher, and I'm really honored to have learned this practice from him.

Then 10 years later, we meet Geshe Michael and his group. He came to Tucson to teach the Diamond Cutter Sutra and was really in Tucson to check out an area of the desert for their three-year retreat. We saw in their literature that they had a practice module called Tonglen. So this whole 10 years that we were practicing Tonglen, there was nothing written in English about it. We had a small Buddhist study group we were a part of, and we were like trying to find different instructions on Tonglen and we were just really left pretty much on our own. Then like, here's this practice module we could study from. So we ordered it.

In those days, what would come would be a set of audio cassettes and a hard copy reading. They wrote us back and they said, so sorry that Tonglen module is not ready to be sent out. So they sent us the ACI course 14, the Lojong course which is where Tonglen is taught, is in Lojong. So we listened to the whole ACI 14 at my little study group, and it's like, we were hooked on the ACI.

So then finally the Tonglen practice module did come but by the time it did, David and I were already connected to Geshe Michael's three-year retreat and the group that was supporting that. We would go down there on weekends to do dishes and David would do maintenance stuff. We got to know the caretakers well. One of the caretakers, her name was Lobsang Chukyi, we invited her or supported her to come and teach Geshe Michael's Tonglen practice in Tucson so that we could learn it properly from him.

It's the same Tonglen practice of course, and it's taught with all these details about how and why and et cetera that we couldn't, we didn't have access to before because none of it was translated into English.

Geshe Michael taught this Tonglen course for the first time in 1999, only in 1999. Like he had, he was very close to the end of the whole ACI series that he had been teaching people. At the end of that, he left his group with Tonglen practice and Thousand Angels of Bliss practice, another one of the practice modules.

Then David and I had both lineages.

The Texts We are Studying From

In order to teach the Tonglen module, Geshe Michael went into the ACIP database and found all the different references to Tonglen, dating all the way back to the very early Buddhist teachings and translated them for the first time.

The main text and commentaries that emphasize Tonglen is a practice text called Lama Chupa. Lama Chupa means offering to the Lamas. This particular one was written by our hero Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. He lived in the 16th, 1700s, a Tibetan man.

We know him as being this extraordinary practitioner, this extraordinary teacher, this extraordinary poet, this extraordinary logician, and this extraordinary retreater. The one that's famous for walking out, in the middle of a impending war and stopping it by bribing the two generals that are going to fight. But it's a longer story than that.

Anyway, so the Lama Chupa text, it is an open text, but it's one of those open texts that over the years has been used in the Diamond Way, such that it came to be held as a secret text. In our Diamond Way training at Diamond Mountain, the 18th course of 18 courses was the Lama Chupa, learning the Lama Chupa. Like secret, secret, secret.

Then coming out of three-year retreat, three years later, like Lama Chupa is everywhere. It's in the practice book that Geshe-la developed during that time. Everybody's doing Lama Chupa, you know? At first I thought, well, there's something wrong here. It's a secret text. What's it done gone open?

Then I realized, no, no, that's the result of our hard work in retreat to bring this beautiful, amazing text out to a world that's ready for it.

Now, granted, Geshe Michael has never taught it. He's given the oral transmission. He uses it. We listen to it. We can even read it, but he's never taught it the way it was taught at Diamond Mountain. So we have something to look forward to.

In the same way that I learned Tonglen but wasn't taught it, do you see? And then I learned about what I'd been doing all that time when I was doing Tonglen.

So these practices work in the way they both do and don't work, whether we understand the details about them or not. But to understand the details helps us use them so much more powerfully, so much more precisely, that we can rely upon them as part of our refuge once we get used to them.

But keep in mind that there's nothing self-existent about Tonglen practice that can do anything for anybody, which is why it can do miracles, sometimes and not others.

Although we could debate that, it could be that the miracle just hasn't happened yet, that we're in that time gap. And the miracle's gonna happen six lifetimes later, in which case, yay. Okay.

I'm hoping that by my sharing this practice with you, that you will like it and enjoy it and that it can benefit you way more than it's benefited myself and David, which I believe that of all my practices, it's the one that's benefited the most.

(27:36) The Tonglen that we will learn is this Tonglen practice that comes down through us through this lineage of Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. It's not that he made it up at all. It's a lineage that comes down through Shakyamuni Buddha. He's the one who shared it with us. He didn't make it up either, probably. He learned it from his teachers. He had teachers, meaning past life teachers.

How the Tonglen Practice Works

In Tibetan, TONG means giving and LEN means taking.

It sounds like we're saying giving and taking, the practice of giving and taking. But remember the syntax of English is backwards from the syntax of Tibetan.

When they say Tonglen, what they hear is taking and giving.

In the Tonglen practice, we take something away first and then give something back. What we are taking is any kind of pain, distress, upset, mental affliction, ugliness, any unpleasantness that we see happening in another. We decide that on our breath, we're gonna suck it out of them and that we're gonna then give them happiness and goodness. Actually the practice is we're going to give them our own happiness and goodness and good karma.

The idea is I'm gonna take your suffering and all your karma for more suffering, I'm gonna take it from you and I'm gonna give you all my goodness.

Can we do that?

No. If we could take somebody's suffering and karma away from them, well then for sure a Buddha could do it for us, why wouldn't they?

Why am I still tired? Why do I still have knee pain? Why do I still get headaches?

If Buddha's doing Tonglen for me, which they are, Buddhas are Tonglen-ing all the time. I love that.

So why bother Tonglen-ing if even a Buddha can't do it?

Why bother eating breakfast if eating breakfast doesn't actually nourish your body?

It's the same thing.

The wish to take away somebody's distress, the pain. The action to try, even just in our imagination and our breath, actually plants the seeds in our mind that as those seeds grow, we'll go on to contribute to our perception of ourselves as one who knows exactly what that other needs to do, what they need to give up, what they need to take up in order to stop their suffering forever someday.

We spontaneously are what they need at the moment.

Tonglen practice plants the seeds for our Buddhahood.

It doesn't mean it doesn't do anything until we reach Buddhahood. It can, it does. But it's simply the wish and the intention.

Oh, so that means I can wish myself into, I don't know, being an Arya. I've tried, wishing doesn't work. But doing practices based on understanding karma and emptiness does work by planting seeds.

So the whole thing we'll see about Tonglen is this beautiful method of using something we're doing all the time anyway, breathing, as the foundation for growing our wish to end others' suffering and to give them happiness. To grow our Bodhichitta.

Really, what Tonglen is doing is helping us grow our progress towards our enlightenment. In the process of that, we find ourselves making happier, healthier, kinder choices of behavior, which is how we show by example how to get happier, how we help others is by being kinder and kinder and kinder.

Without understanding how Tonglen works and doesn't work, people might have the experience of doing Tonglen practice and then themselves getting sick. And then them thinking, oh my gosh, that Tonglen practice, it really did make me…, I really did take their pain. I really did take their cancer. Whoa, I didn't mean it, right? And they end up disrespecting and quitting the practice, or even just thinking like, what if? I can Tonglen somebody who's maybe having a headache, but I'm not gonna Tonglen somebody with cancer because I could get it.

To understand that that cannot happen, even if it appears that it happens, it helps build our ability to Tonglen deeper. We cannot take someone's suffering into ourselves. Even if we could, this practice is designed to take that suffering in and destroy it. We'll see. We're not just taking somebody's suffering and letting it fly around in the universe so it can land on somebody else. We're taking it. We will learn to take it into ourselves and use it to destroy the ignorance and selfishness within ourselves, which is actually the source of all the suffering we can see in the world anyway.

We'll be using the distress we see in our outer world to destroy our own ignorance and selfishness and to replace what we've taken from the other, to replace it with happiness and good karma and wisdom. So we'll be perceiving ourselves, suck the yuck out of them, perceiving ourselves, use that yuck to destroy our ignorance. And perceiving ourselves, giving them happiness.

What more powerful seeds could we make than to see that process happening?

We learn how to do it on our meditation cushion.

Once we understand that, you don't have to be in meditation to do it. We just have to be breathing because we do it all on our breath, and there's a reason for that, a powerful reason for that.

Tonglen and Lam Rim

(37:05) So where does Tonglen fit in our Lam Rim?

We're all studying Lam Rim again. This study has started us from how to take a teacher. Then we learn the steps on the path all the way up to becoming our own enlightened being, a being made of love, compassion, and wisdom, who is the one who's standing before the one that's praying, please come help me.

But there's a pre-step to Lam Rim, which is recognizing that we need help, recognizing that we even need a teacher. We're not gonna go looking for a teacher if we don't have anything new to learn.

So when we learn three principal paths, for those who have taken the ACI course 1, there are three realizations, things that become real for us, that move us along this path from suffering human to totally enlightened being. Anybody remember?

Three principal paths, what's the first one?

(student: Renunciation.)

Renunciation. What's the second one?

(student: Bodhichitta.)

Bodhichitta. What's the third one?

(student: Direct view of emptiness.)

Right, correct worldview. Thank you.

What's renunciation?

(student: I have enough of this world.)

Yeah, I've had enough of this world.

Geshe-la says, sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sick and tired of everything going wrong. Sick and tired of even the good things ending, going wrong. Even if we manage to have this great, perfect life, somebody dies. Somebody who's part of my perfect life dies, or I die, right? In which case it's too late in this life for renunciation. 

Renunciation is, there's gotta be something wrong with this picture.

Probably we've all had some experience or series of experiences where we finally hit some version of renunciation, or you would not be here in a class like this. We already see that there's something wrong with this world. And we already have the seeds to wish that we could figure that out.

To be in a class like this, specifically Tonglen, we must also already have the seeds for that renunciation to have been turned onto the others in our life, the others in our world.

What's renunciation turned on to others? What do we call it?

(student: Bodhichitta)

Bodhichitta. I want to reach my total enlightenment so that I can help others in that deep and ultimate way. It's really a deep subject. Lord Maitreya gives us this simple version. 

Once our renunciation is strong for ourselves, my suffering is no longer acceptable, I'm gonna learn how to stop it. And we learn what it takes to stop it.

Then we see others in our world suffering. We connect the dot. Their suffering is as big a mistake as my suffering. Even while we're still blaming their suffering on them, which it is their own karma–although technically the way we see them suffering is our karma. 

We're reaching this deeper and deeper aha that all that suffering is a big mistake. It's driven by a big misunderstanding, and so it's like, it's so unnecessary. Not that it hasn't happened. Not that it isn't real. But it's just this big mistake. If I could just stop making the mistake, I'd stop perpetuating it. And if I can do it, everybody can do it, and maybe trying to do it for everybody is what it takes for me to do it.

Yet we go, but I'm so puny. I'm just one little me.

I used to interact with a lot of people during the day. Now I interact with the ants on the kitchen counter and my husband Sumati. Then on a few days, I go out and am part of an exercise class and a dance class. There's a few neighbors, like a handful of people in my day, real, not real, in the flesh people versus in little boxes people (referring to Zoom). So just my world has gotten so much smaller at the same time as it's gotten so much bigger because when I interact with you, we're all over the world.

It's like my physical life is really teeny, and it feels like I'm so limited in what I can do. With Tonglen, we are unlimited. With our understanding of our renunciation, Bodhichitta and worldview, we are unlimited in what we can do. Even when we are all by ourself for days in a row, like in retreat.

In fact, my personal experience with retreat is that I feel I can do so much more for so many more in deep retreat than I can in worldly life. That's like, let me go into retreat. I don't get to go often anymore, but for many years, 20 years, it was a regular part of my program. Twice a year, six weeks at least.

So why did I go there? Bodhichitta, where Tonglen fits in the Lam Rim is, it's one of the methods of growing our Bodhichitta. So Bodhichitta is the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It comes out of our own personal renunciation turned onto others.

This Bodhichitta wish, I've heard Geshe-la describe it as the feeling in our hearts when every conscious being that we experience our feeling towards them is that they are our only child who's suffering, burning up with 105 degree fever. That's like life threateningly dangerous, and your only child.

He says, when every driver and every car that whizzes by your heart goes, oh my gosh. Every gnat on the windshield, oh my gosh. Every ant you step over on the sidewalk, oh my gosh.

It sounds like almost impossible. Freezing, we'd be just frozen with, oh my gosh, they're all on the verge of dying. What am I gonna do? Tonglen is what you're gonna do because we're already breathing and that gets us started.

But imagine having a heart that loving, compassion is that strong and we still waltz out amongst other beings in order to be that and feel that. It seems impossible, but with training, we can learn anything. We have all probably learned something new that required us to have a teacher, be taught the skills, be told, do the skills over and over again before you can do the performance or the competition or whatever. And we applied, we applied ourselves, we applied ourselves, and we got proficient, maybe even good at what it is we were wanting to learn.

Growing our Bodhichitta is the same. We learn the skills, we learn the details. If we just leave them at the learning level, it won't make a whole lot of difference this life. If we take the learning level into the trying level, into the experience of life, trying to use what we're learning to choose our reactions, our actions differently, that's the doing the skills, repeating the skills, training. 

The results will begin to ripen as these easier and easier behavior choices that are falling back on deeper and deeper kindness, deeper and deeper compassion.

One of the ways to grow this Bodhichitta from, gosh, wouldn't it be nice to become Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings, to this heartfelt, oh my gosh, they're all burning up with fever, every single one I've got to do something, feeling, is one of the methods, is the Tonglen.

We'll learn the details of it next class, I think.

The Tibetan System of Panchen Lama and Dalai Lama as Part of our Lineage

(49:53) Tonglen practice was passed down to us from Lord Buddha.

It comes into our lineage through Master Shantideva.

It comes to the Tibetans through the group of practitioners that came to be known as the Kadampas.

That's where the Panchen Lama's lineage comes into play, is that the Kadampas pass it onto the first Panchen Lama.

At the time of the Kadampas, if you've taken course 14, the Lojong course, we learned that those practices of heart opening practices, they were taught teacher to student like one-on-one when the teacher saw that the student was ready, their compassion was big enough, their renunciation was big enough. They would teach these practices called Lojong. It wasn't publicly taught for a long time.

Then along comes a few of those teachers and they recognized, wow, these practices are so important, so powerful. What if by keeping them so secret, somebody who really is ready for them doesn't get them? And they decide, I'm willing to take the risk of teaching them to people who aren't ready so that I don't miss the few that are ready. And Lojong goes public in the Tibetan world and people just take to it.

Lobsang Chukyi Geyltsen was one of those who received it and got it and then used it and passed it along so exquisitely that he puts it into his text called the Lama Chupa, as I said, which is this beautiful text that's a combination of making offerings to your Lama and requesting blessings from them.

We'll talk about requesting blessings and how it can happen and not happen at the same time so that it can happen, that we can receive blessings. 

One of the practices he gives several verses to is about requesting the blessing of the Lama to be able to make this Tonglen practice our main practice. So it's telling us that it was probably his main practice. And as we learn about him and how extraordinary he was or is, it's supposed to inspire us to want to do the same.

Panchen Lama and Dalai Lama, like the system in the Tibetan system, when the Dalai Lama withdraws their emanation, there's a 16 to 20 year period where there's no Dalai Lama in charge. So the system developed to where the Panchen Lama would be the one that would step in and serve, do the Dalai Lama's duties for the country and for the spiritual traditions until the new Dalai Lama was found and trained.

So this man Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen who comes to be known as the first Panchen Lama, he was involved in training the next Dalai Lama. Not all the Panchen Lamas were involved in training the Dalai Lama, but then when the Panchen Lama withdraws, the Dalai Lama is already back in charge. Then the new Panchen Lama is sought out and that one becomes trained so that they can take over when this Dalai Lama goes.

That was the pattern for a long, long time, many generations. 

Then, in our time, the Panchen Lama, the old one passed, the new one was found, a Tibetan one was found in the traditional method, and then a Chinese one was found. Of course there was conflict there. Then the Tibetan one disappeared.

That happened in the 90s, and as far as I know, nobody knows if that…, nobody knows. But the Chinese one is not an ordained person, and they're somehow being groomed to take over when the Dalai Lama, our current Dalai Lama withdraws. So that's still a bit of a conflict and a difficulty. And the current Dalai Lama is dealing with that stuff.

But this is like partly where we are. We are involved in that lineage because we are studying from Panchen Lama, and we are in the Gelugpa of the Dalai Lama.

Not that you have to take sides, nothing like that at all. But just to understand who we're dealing with, is we're learning from the man who taught the Dalai Lamas, and whose lineage was passed on.

How our Spiritual Practice is More Powerful Than Worldly Ways of Helping

(54:28) So in training ourselves in this Bodhichitta, training our heart to love in this big, big, big way, we do reach a point where we recognize that the worldly ways that we help people truly are secondary to our spiritual practice on behalf of others.

There may come a period of time where we have a practice that we do, or a teaching that we are going to, or a retreat opportunity, and maybe it's gonna happen over some holiday and our family expects us to be there for the holiday.

At first we have this conflict, no, I really, really wanna go to that teaching. But because I love you, I will stay home and I will do holiday with you. There'll be a bit of resentment, but you'll do it happily. Then, as we grow in our understanding of the power of our teaching and retreating and meditating, the power of that to influence others, we come to see more and more clearly that it's a higher benefit to leave them for the holidays and go do this other thing, even when they are the ones that end up being resentful and misunderstanding. It's a difficult place to be.

I speak of it not to say, do that before you're ready. But just to recognize that if you're finding yourself conflicted between, I need to be there for them for that, versus here's this opportunity to learn a deeper practice about emptiness and karma and how to become a Buddha. At some point, when you're convinced that it's a higher deed to go practice and study than to stay home to please them worldly, we'll be willing to do so.

Not before, but there will be times when worldly people appear to be upset with the time that you spend on your practice.

When our Bodhichitta is strong, that will increase our renunciation, increase our Bodhichitta, not be a conflict.

Now, how we interact with our families, whether we fight with them about it, or we support them and help them understand and set them up for something better, our daily life with our families and our practice is what will plant the seeds so that when the time comes, they'll go, yes, you know, mother, please go. When you come back, you're always so much sweeter. Please go to your program.

That's the ideal, is to set that up that way.

Tonglen practice is one of those practices that we can be doing that will help develop the seeds from our own side, where we will see people around us so happy. Yes, yes, go, go. How can I support you? Go do what you need to do. Because we know you're doing it out of love for us. That's such a powerful influence on them to be able to recognize how love can be demonstrated in different ways. It isn't just stay here, take care of me. 

Geshe-la's phrase was, a person with Bodhichitta might actually have to ignore other people's common needs for a while.

A person with Bodhichitta might actually have to ignore other people's common needs for a while.

It seems so non-Bodhisattva to be in retreat while the world's burning up, but it's not. Because all the worldly ways we help people just wear out. 

Tonglen Meditation Part 1 - Using Ourselves a Meditation Object

(62:18) Let me take you through the first Tonglen meditation. In this session, we're going to go slowly and nicely through the meditation preliminaries, and then we'll do the first LEN, taking part of Tonglen. We'll get to the giving a few classes later.

The person we're going to take suffering from is going to be your tomorrow's-you.

Tomorrow's-you is gonna have some difficulty. So think about what you have to do tomorrow.

It's like, am I gonna be driving through traffic? Probably no, it's Saturday.

Do I have a meeting with somebody that I have to discipline?

There's gonna be some kind of distress tomorrow. And we're gonna set you up, that there's your tomorrow's-you, here's your today's-you, and your today's-you is gonna be there with tomorrow's-you, and we're gonna take that suffering away from them and do something with it.

That'll be the second half of what we do.

When we say, I wanna reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, we are one of those all sentient beings. So we are meant to take our own suffering away?

Like how can we know how to stop somebody else's suffering if we don't even know what it's like to get our own suffering stopped in some way?

When I first learned Tonglen, I did learn from Geshe Gyeltsen, Tonglen on yourself first. I couldn't do it for a long, long time. It's like, no, no, not me, everybody else.

Then now, like so long later, it's like, duh, do yourself first. Because you do yourself well enough, everybody else's suffering is gonna go away too, right? Ultimately.

Anyway, we'll learn.

But let's do the preliminaries really sweetly, slowly.

In your own daily session, don't do your preliminaries long and sweet and slow, unless that's your whole day's practice. Because you use up your meditation power in your meditation preliminaries, and then it's like, eh, you can't do your actual meditation.

So when you do your daily meditation preliminaries, they go along swiftly. They shouldn't take any more than 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

But I'm gonna spend probably a whole half an hour going through them, because Geshe-la gave them in this amazing sweet way that's so beautiful.

And so from time to time, you might want to come back and revisit, right, this version of the preliminaries as a whole practice, because it's so powerful.

Some of you, I know their meditation level because of classes that we've done. Others of you, I don't quite know. So this'll be a long meditation for some, probably 45, 50 minutes. Do your best. Don't worry about being absolutely rigid like a rock today, but try not to get up and walk around. Stay still.

Preliminaries

(66:46) So first we set our bodies. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it, but you want a sinking down into your sits bones, so you like push down and then feel above that your torso is upright.

Get a sense of your sternum lifting with the back of your head and your crown lifting. 

Your chin tucks a little bit. Exaggerate it, and then let it sink down into relaxation.

Do this body scan from your top of your head down your face and neck, just inviting everything to relax, to be happy.

When you get down to the bottom in that scan of relaxation, turn your mind and go back up until you come to the sensations at what we call your nostrils for what we call your breath. Find that location, and zoom your focus of attention onto those sensations, out breath, in breath.

Get your focus clear, your mind bright, and turn on your intensity, the fascination with those sensations. Keep adjusting until you find that sweet spot.

Now intentionally change what this bright mind is focused on to focusing on that precious holy being, your own personal guide, perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, manifesting there to help you.

See them there. If you're not a visualizer, know they are there, feel them there. Bask in their goodness. Feel your admiration for them. Grow your aspiration to become like them and ask them to help you.

Then turn your mind to that person you thought of at the beginning of class who's hurting in some way.

Recognize how the worldly ways we try to help them will just fall short.

Grow your wish to be able to help them in some deep and ultimate way someday.

Then turn your mind back to that precious holy being.

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do to be able to help this other in that deep and ultimate way.

Declare yourself to them and to their teachings and to those they have already taught.

I rely upon you. I entrust myself to you. I come to you for shelter, for help.

By the merit that I do in this meditation, please help me become one who can help others reach their ultimate happiness.

Then think of just one of their amazing qualities.

Feel again your admiration and aspiration.

Feel your willingness to learn new things, to choose new behaviors.

Make a mental prostration to them.

Then feel your gratitude and make them offerings. It can be any kind of beautiful thing. 

Multiply it and rain it down upon them.

See them enjoy it.

And then also offer something from your practice, some kindness that you did or thought or said, especially because of something that they taught you.

Tell them. They like this best.

See them so pleased with your offering and you feel so safe with them that you're ready to clean yourself of some negativity, some unkindness that we thought or said or did. 

Open your heart, let them see.

They know already.

Tell them briefly of the situation and the reaction.

Recall that they have taught us about karma and emptiness, and so how what we have done will come back to us bigger.

Remind yourself of your belief and your determination to live in a way that will create a happier world for everyone.

And so grow that regret for having made that mistake, having let ourself fall back into old habits.

Tell them of your regret for those mental seeds and make a determination not to repeat that mistake in a similar situation. Make a promise you can really keep.

Now make a determination to do a makeup activity, something especially kind to neutralize those negative seeds. It could be doing this meditation or doing this meditation daily until our next class.

And know that you actually can damage these seeds by doing what we say we'll do and avoiding what we said we would avoid.

Now we fill our hearts with rejoicing.

Feel happy for all the goodness that every being who sees themselves as a Buddha had to have done to reach that state.

Feel happy for all the goodness of those who have learned from those beings, all the goodness of those teachings being passed down.

Rejoice in all of your own teachers and guides, all who have helped bring you to now. 

Rejoice in all the generosity in the world that is resulting in so many beings with abundance.

Rejoice in all the protecting life and caring for the sick that has been done, that so many beings survive childhood, that so many beings live to such old ages.

Rejoice in any protecting life you have ever done.

Rejoice in a specific kindness that you did recently intentionally, because of your understanding of how you create your future by way of our moment by moment interactions.

Be pleased with yourself.

Now, filled with this happiness, ask that precious guide and all your companions on your path to stay close to you, to continue to help you, support you, inspire you.

Ask them to bring teachings, formal ones and informal ones, anything to help you overcome innate selfishness and ignorance.

Feel willing to receive, feel willing to change.

Give them permission to help you and give yourself permission to be helped, permission to change.

Then dedicate the goodness we've done of these preliminaries to achieve some specific goal by the merit of what I have just done, by the truth of the marriage of karma and emptiness.

May, fill in the sentence, come about quickly, quickly, quickly so that I can become one who can help all others reach their ultimate happiness.

Tonglen Meditation

(89:26) Now check in with your body to see if it needs to shift or adjust.

If it needs to, feel free. If it doesn't, you can stay put.

Then settle back in. Return to the breath.

Fine tune the focus, the clarity, the intensity.

Now think of yourself sometime tomorrow when you expect to be having a difficult time with someone or something. I'll give us a little time to find it.

Identify that anticipated stress clearly and imagine this-you now is like an invisible angel there with tomorrow's-you, wherever they are. You are there too.

You are watching that you's discomfort. Of course you know the emotions they're feeling. You know what they are thinking. You know how they are wanting to react.

Your this-you's compassion is growing, so aware of that-you's distress they're headed towards doing, thinking, saying something that's just gonna come back to hurt them. 

Your compassion is like, no, no, don't do it.

And so by the power of your concern and your concentration, focusing in on that-you's distress, see all that negativity, like black yuck flowing around within their body.

You can even see it by the power of your concentration, your wish to protect them.

See that black stuff that's flowing in all directions, turning and being attracted towards the middle of that-you's chest.

Concentrate, watch, feel your sense of wanting to protect. And all that goo is gathering, gathering, gathering in tomorrow-you's middle of their chest.

Gather it until it's a gooey, yucky little black ball about the size of an olive or smaller. Now, angel-you, say to yourself, I'm going to take all of that distress, <name it>.

I'm going to take all of that from you to help you.

I'm going to take this suffering you're having now and all the causes for future similar suffering, I'm going to take it from you.

You are saying in your now-you's mind to your tomorrow's-you.

And now with each now-you's exhale, see and feel that exhale breath come out of your nostrils towards your tomorrow's-you. It goes a little ways out first exhale.

On the inhale, it just pauses there.

Next exhale, it goes a little further towards them.

Next one, a little more until it reaches the place where their inhale draws it in, and your exhale continues it.

Still focusing on exhales, you see your breath go in their nostrils, down to hook into that little black ball–just a little bit at a time until you have that black ball hooked to your exhale.

Once it's hooked, we shift our focus to our inhales and remind yourself, I'm taking all of this now suffering and all the seeds for future similar, and I'm going to take it out of that me.

And with each inhale, your inhale is pulling that black ball up, up through their throat, up around out their nose. Each inhale pulling it closer and closer towards the angel you there with them, until you have that black ball of their suffering hovering just underneath your now use nostrils.

Once you have it there, leave it for a moment and look down into your now-you’s middle of your chest. You see a tiny little flame there.

That flame represents our self grasping and our self cherishing, meaning our me, and I want, I don't want–subtle states of mind, our ignorance and selfishness.

So we have the flame of our ignorance, the black ball of their suffering.

Now just listen, I'll explain what's going to happen on one long inhale, then I'll say, do it. So not yet.

On one long inhale, we will draw that black ball into now-you’s nostrils down throat, down chest. Slowly, slowly, it goes closer and closer to the flame.

You'll watch really, really carefully to see the first instant when the black ball of goo touches the flame, because the next instant there'll be a flash of light that will then blink out.

There'll be a wisp of smoke that will then clear and all that suffering and all that ignorance will be gone.

So to set ourselves up, get again well-established in the you now, with the black ball of goo of tomorrow's-you’s suffering and the tiny little flame in its specific location.

Then when you're ready, you let a nice, easy, long exhale, and at the start of its inhale, you draw that black ball in, up around and down and watch it touch the flame.

So on your next exhale, you start and go. 

Once the wisp of smoke is gone, breathe normally and look back at your tomorrow's-you, all that suffering gone, all the causes for it gone.

See them calm, happy even.

Their heart is open, and kind, and helpful.

They are able to deal with that situation in a whole new way.

Enjoy that tomorrow-you’s relief and enjoyment.

Rejoice that you were able to help in that way.

Dedicate this effort to reaching the ability to truly stop suffering and its causes, to bring others to the love that is the cause of all happiness, to bring others to the joy of knowing truth directly, to bring others to their perfect freedom from ignorance.

We have planted seeds for all of that.

And so turn your mind to that precious holy being in gratitude for how they are teaching you and guiding you.

Offer them the goodness that we've done.

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there, feel them there.

Their love, their compassion, their wisdom, it feels so good, we want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies

That merit and wisdom make.

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere.

See them all filled with loving kindness and the wisdom of loving kindness.

And may it be so.

Questions

(107:58) Nice job. That was almost 40 minutes of sit. You did great. Not so hard.

So we have a little time yet. Any questions, comments, anything we need to clear up?

(student: How can I overcome the feelings while I'm meditating, in my body? Like I'm too aware probably of the environment and it just takes my concentration away from the meditation.)

I wish there was something I could say that would just go, okay, this will fix it, right? Maybe Sylvia has a clue. Yeah, meditation is a training and it takes time like any other. The tool that I personally have found to help with that is like not in this particular meditation, but in a separate session, I would actually use all of those sensations. I would use each one, like I would recognize it and go, oh, there's that sensation. It's a karmic seed ripening. It's done and gone. Now I'm back. And then there goes the next one. Oh, karmic seed ripening. Let it go. Now I'm back, right? So I actually used them. And then pretty soon it quit happening. It's almost like whatever that was that's doing that to your mind, it's just like the three-year-old trying to get mom's attention. And when it's finally happy with something else, it leaves you alone.

So for Tonglen practice, don't worry. It's gonna happen. Just pull back and come back. 

Do you have anything to share, Sylvia?

(Silvia: I mean, not only, I have a question, Lama Sarahni. I have a question. But before that, I recently became aware in a study that exactly what you explained, Lama Sarahni, that when we are aware of our mind wandering and then bring it back to the object of meditation, that's where the learning happens. That's where the training happens. And that makes us strong. You know, those meditation muscles.)

Yeah, good. 

Sylvia leads meditation training in Europe, which is why I'm asking her opinion. She's a long-term student. Happy to have you.

(student: It's an honor to be there. So, okay, I ask my question. Lama Sarani, so it's said that we don't do Tonglen with our Lama. Is that right?)

That's correct.

(student: I don't understand that. Because when we have worldview, we understand that the Lama is coming from our seeds. So isn't it my obligation that when I see something like an illness or something, to clean via the Tonglen meditation, to clean my seeds?)

Yes, right. So the thing is though, that when we…, In this tradition, we're using our big Lama, right? Like I'm not saying me, people call me Lama, but I'm not talking about me.

But when we have our heart Lama, our heart Lama is for us the Buddha manifesting, looking to me like a special, but still human being. If we let ourselves go, Whoah, my Lama has kidney disease–we are negating our belief that that Lama is a Buddha because Buddhas cannot have kidney disease. They can manifest it, but they don't suffer from it. They don't have it.

So when we think, oh, I need to Tonglen my Lama because they're sick, what we're saying to our own mind is, I don't believe they're Buddha. But what we can do is me, who sees them as a suffering being, Tonglen me. Tonglen yourself for seeing them sick and the seeds to see them sick. So you're not Tonglen-ing them, you're Tonglen-ing you. 

And to be honest with you, that just came through, right? So it's like, that's what we should be doing.

(student: Amazing. Thank you. That makes it, that clarifies it for me. Thank you so much.)

For me too.

(student: Teacher. When we invite the holy being, like Buddha and, so is it all right that if let's say we invite Geshe Michael to sit in front of us? So it's not a problem, isn't it?)

Not at all. As long as that being is a manifestation for you, perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom.

(student: So if let's say like Manjushri or, any, the lover is same like Buddha. So we can invite them to sit in front of us, isn't it?)

Yes. 

Good. What else?

(student: I was a little bit confused when I as the holy being was inhaling the bad stuff and then I visualizing that small flame that's myself thing. I noticed that there was a small, oops, how can that be? Because I'm the holy being. And after that, well, then I tried to orientate myself a little bit and said, okay, I lower a little bit that self-esteem as an angel. But I felt I was a little bit irritated in that moment.)

Got it. Yeah. So, I have two answers.

So one is, if you being the holy being before your you taking their suffering, then the flame that you're gonna extinguish would be all the flame of ignorance that's left in the world, not yours. Because you don't have it. But you see other people having it and you just go, and you can still explode it.

But you took literally my words, which is great to be the little angel in front of your other. But when Geshe-la first said that to people, I took it to mean, just imagine that you could be more like an invisible being in front of them. He called it angel to plant the seeds. And he knew that my mind wouldn't take it the way your beautiful mind did, like I'm already fully enlightened. So then don't tell me I've got ignorance inside my chest.

So I like your way, right? You do it your way and destroy all ignorance that's still left in the world by putting a flame in your own heart. You can do that as a Buddha and it's not yours.(student: Yeah, that resonates with me now very much. That's very beautiful. Thank you so much.)

But for those of us that aren't the angel yet, we're the little invisible being. It's the ignorance and suffering inside that causes the me tomorrow to act the way they're going to act. So I take that suffering and I smother, don't smother, incinerate both the future suffering and the ignorance that's going to cause it. Do you see the power of the practice?

Is it really happening? Not worldly. But is it happening? Yes. Hooray.

Okay. So please do your tomorrow's-you every day until we meet again. Because it's going to be a different tomorrow's-you and a different distress, right?

Good, have fun. All right, thank you for the opportunity. 

Okay, for the recording, welcome back. We are Tonglen class 2, November 10th, 2025. Thank you for being prompt for class.

What I'd like to do today is start with the meditation, a repeat of the one we did before in terms of Tonglen, but with the shorter version of the preliminaries so that we have time, I hope, to do two future me Tonglens. So we'll do tomorrow's-me and then maybe next week me as well.

So settle yourself in. We'll do our opening prayers, then the prelims, then go into the Tonglen.

So mostly get your body upright, sufficiently comfortable to reduce distractions, but not so comfortable you'll fall asleep. Once you're set, bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Meditation: Tonglen-ing Ourselves

Preliminaries

(9:20) Bring your attention back to your breath, turning on your meditative focus, tuning up the clarity and turning on the intensity, fascination or curiosity.

Now we'll start the preliminaries.

Intentionally change your focus from your breath to that precious being before you. 

Think about just one of their amazing qualities, one that you aspire to grow in yourself. 

Feel your admiration for them.

Feel your own wanting to become like them and make a mental prostration before them. 

In some way, show them your honor of them, and then think of something that you've learned from them already that has helped you in some way.

Feel your gratitude.

Know that they have so much more to teach us, to show us.

And so make them an offering, both out of gratitude and out of request.

What they like best is to hear of something from your practice, something that you thought, or said, or did different than habit because of something they taught you.

Tell them about that. Of course they know anyway, but they're so happy for you to hear yourself make this offering to them.

And we feel so safe with them. We can open our heart to confess some negative thing that we said or did or thought recently.

Some seed we planted in our heart that we know when it comes back to us, it will be unpleasant for ourselves and for others.

Tell them about it briefly, the situation briefly, what you did.

Recall your refuge and your regret and establish some power of restraint and an antidote.

I'll give us two minutes to go through all of that.

Now fill that cleared out space with rejoicing.

Tell them of some kindness, goodness that you saw somebody else do recently.

Tell them of another kindness you did.

Tell them of something good about somebody that you have a little trouble with.

See that being so happy to hear about your rejoicings and ask them to please, please stay close.

Ask the people in your life that influence you for the better to stay close.

Ask that precious being to continue to bring you teachings, both formal ones and the everyday teachings that come through daily life interactions with others.

Give yourself permission to receive those teachings.

Give yourself permission to change.

And dedicate the goodness we've done just so far to some shift you'd like to see in yourself or your world.

Tonglen Meditation

(21:14) Then you can release that focus.

Look back at your own body. See if it needs to shift and wiggle.

If it needs to, now's the time.

Then you reset its position.

Start again with bringing your focus of attention at the sensations we call breath at your nostrils, using that object of focus to fine tune your focus, your clarity, your intensity, finding that sweet spot of concentration.

Now intentionally shift from the breath as the object of focus to tomorrow's-you as the object of focus.

You in some situation that you anticipate to be a little difficult, settle on one.

And then this-you goes to sit in front of them invisible.

This-you gazing at them, that-you in that situation, you know what they're feeling.

You know what they're experiencing.

You know their urge to act in a certain way.

You're thinking, no, no, don't do that.

And so you determine, I'm going to take that distress, that problem away.

By the power of your concentration, looking into that-you, you see all that black yuck flowing around within them, the black yuck of the perception of the disturbing situation, the emotions, the beliefs, the impulse to act.

By the power of your concentration, all of that black flowing around yuck turns and starts to gather into a black ball in the middle of their chest.

Take your time.

Your focus with your intention is the magnet that pulls that yuck into that center of their chest. Identify it as it gathers.

Check to see that there's none left hanging out in their little toe, or somewhere. 

Recognize that within this black ball of goo is all the karmic seeds.

They could bring on something similar in the future.

And when you would have it all gathered, you make the determination, I'm going to take that from you.

And with that, you become aware of your exhales, that ribbon of breath, exhale as it leaves your nostrils. Each exhale going a little bit closer to your tomorrow's-you until it gets close enough that their inhale helps pull it in.

And you see that ribbon of your exhale going in their nose, up and around and down, hooking into that black ball of light, of goo.

Once you have it well hooked, you think, okay, now's the time to take it from them.

And you shift focus to inhale, using your inhale, like a crane, with each inhale, you're pulling that black ball of goo up their chest, up through their throat, up out their nostrils, slowly drawing it towards yourself until you have it there hovering beneath your invisible-you's nostrils, this you.

Again, identify it.

Then leave it there for a moment, and turn your focus into the middle of this-you's chest. 

You see that tiny little flame there, the flame of our misunderstanding ourselves and our world, our belief that there's a me that things happen to.

And that me has to push bad things away and grab for pleasant things.

We do it in the wrong way because of this flame of misunderstanding, of ignorance.

Look at the black ball of goo, and look at the flame in your heart, and make the determination, I'm going to use these two to destroy each other.

And so, recall that you're going to take a nice long exhale, and then on a smooth inhale, you'll pull that black ball into your this-you, in and down, slow it down as it gets close to the flame so that you can see them touch. The instant they touch, they explode in a flash of bright light, go out, wisp of smoke, and then that too goes out.

So, set yourself up for that to happen, and when you're ready, do your long exhale first, and then your inhale.

Then breathe normally, and rest in that absence.

Then look back at that tomorrow's-you, and see, oh my gosh, they are so relieved. 

They're feeling strong and confident.

Their impulse to act now is kind, from kindness. They know what to do.

Your this-you feels happy too, that you were able to help them in that way.

And so, this-you now thinks, well next week, or later on in this month, I know I'm going to be in this certain situation, and it's going to be hard in these ways. Let's go to that me.

So, find another future you.

Nod when you have them.

This-you goes invisibly before them, and again, knows their situation, knows their distress, the upset they're feeling, the action they are feeling compelled to do or say. 

This-you sees so clearly how that action will just perpetuate problems later, and your heart says, no, no, no, don't do that.

You're determined to take that distress away from them.

Turn your focus on to the black goo inside, gathering it into their chest, identifying it clearly. There's that jealousy again, or that pride, or those hurt feelings.

Get it all gathered together into one tight little ball, recognizing that within that is also all the seeds for more of this kind of distress.

Then make your determination to take it from them, and start your focus on the exhale, going slowly towards them until it gets close enough to their inhales that they draw it in. 

As you exhale, it goes in, around, and down, hooking into that black ball of distress. 

When you have it well hooked, shift your focus to your in-breath, and use that in-breath to crank that black ball up, around and out their nostrils, pulling it towards your this-you until you have that black ball of goo hovering underneath your nostrils.

Identify it again.

Then leave it there. Look into your own chest. There's that tiny flame again.

The flame of my belief in self-existence.

Make that determination that when the black ball touches the flame, they will extinguish each other.

Set yourself up, and then start with the long exhale, followed by the inhale, whenever you're ready.

Breathe normally. Rest in the absence of that distress, the absence of that misunderstanding, freedom.

Then turn your attention back to that future-you, and see how relieved they feel.

See how their perception of their situation has shifted. They're not distressed at all.

They see it as an opportunity to help and to grow.

Your invisible this-you feels so happy. You were able to help them.

And so dedicate that effort, those good seeds we made, to growing this ability to use Tonglen to help reduce and stop the distress of our world.

Bring your this-you back to now in your room, in this class.

When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

That was 45 minutes. You did great. It's not so hard when we have a nice story going on, right?

(46:35) So, is there anything about the practice so far that needs clarifying, that you want help with?

(student: What is the purpose of doing this two, I mean, because we suck out the two times, is there any special purpose instead of just doing on tomorrow's-me? I mean, is there any special purpose or just to get use of the practice?)

Yeah, I did two because we had time to do two, to do a me tomorrow and a me next week. You can do, ‘me’ as far ahead in the future as you want, as long as you're not so far into the future that you can't really relate to the you and the mental afflictions that that you might have.

So, for instance, a 20 year old, you might want to go and Tonglen the 80 year old you, but it would be hard to relate to what the 80 year old you is feeling when you're 20. So, you don't want to go so far ahead that you don't really know what you're feeling. But maybe tomorrow is not going to be distressing, and you can't find anything that you want to work on. So no specific purpose other than to learn how to do it.

(student: So, teacher, in that sense, can we do it to the past of us because we have more connection to the past of us where we were suffering? )

I hadn't thought of that before, and it wasn't in Geshe Michael's teachings. But you absolutely could. Yeah.

The powerful piece is the identification of the mental affliction that is the distress of the moment. If you were in a situation, let's use the classical one–boss yelling. Maybe for me, I'm feeling insulted and disrespected. Maybe for you, you'd be feeling physically threatened because you have a different background than I, in which case your reaction is out of fear. So, we could be in a similar situation and even be showing a similar kind of resistance to the situation, but the mental affliction inside could be very different. Then even for me, this event of boss yelling could be bringing up jealousy for some reason. Whereas some other episode of their yelling at me would bring up fear. So when we're doing this Tonglen, the more specific that we can be about what's in the black goo that we're gathering, the more powerfully we will see changes in our future.

If we just go, yeah, I'm distressed. Yes, it's upsetting. It's black goo. I'll take it from me. It's still useful. But the more specific, it means the imprint that we're making by doing the Tonglen is more specific. So if we recognize that we have our personal mental affliction, that is the thing that's always seems to be underlying every situation that upsets me. And we can identify that as being what's in the black goo and what's being destroyed by the flame of ignorance. And is it by recognizing it, that's how we're destroying the ignorance. So the two destroy each other, and really have this sense of when those two touch the black yuck and all its seeds for more and the flame that's trying to keep it going. Because of my understanding, when those two touch, they're going to whoosh and then go out in a flash, the wisp of smoke and then gone.

So we want to be as clear as we can. Which is why it really helps to do Tonglen on oneself first, because we know our own mental affliction. When we Tonglen somebody else, we don't really know. We're doing our best by way of what we see.

Anything else? 

How to Grow our Bodhichitta

(57:17) Where does Tonglen fit in the Lam Rim? I'm really asking.

It starts our renunciation, right? –Wrong.

Renunciation starts it? –Maybe.

Tonglen's part of growing our Bodhichitta. Growing our Bodhichitta is what moves us from lesser capacity to greater capacity. From the wish to end our own suffering to wanting to help everybody do the same, understanding that it takes trying to help everybody do the same in order for us to end ours forever.

Tonglen practice is one of the practices that help us grow our Bodhichitta.

But which Bodhichitta?

There's two Bodhichittas: The wish in the form of the prayer and the wish in the form of action. Am I talking about those two?

Not really.

The wish that's the heart opening wish versus Bodhichitta, which is the direct perception of emptiness.

Which one is Tonglen helping us develop? Trick question, right?

True, we're using our growing loving compassion to use Tonglen to clear out the obstacles to that loving heart. And the reason we're growing our loving heart is so that we can act more kindly, so that we can gather the goodness so that our intellectual understanding of emptiness and dependent origination will grow, so that our wisdom will color our impulses to act, so that our kindnesses will go deeper, so that our wisdom will go deeper, so that our kindnesses go deeper, so our wisdom. Until we reach Bodhichitta.

The Bodhichitta which is the direct perception of emptiness, so now we know, and the Bodhichitta, which is that heart opening experience from which we also know that me and every existing being and every existing thing, we are connected by way of those mental seeds made by way of our behavior.

We're using our impulse to grow our kindness. We use this practice called Tonglen to help us grow that impulse from an impulse to a habit, to that's our natural state of being, this caring for others as if they were my only child burning up with fever–whether I like them or not, whether they're nice to me or not, whether they're dangerous or not, whether they're human or not. Our Bodhichitta extends to the worm and the mosquito and the snake and its heart.

Then of course, it extends to those beings that are existing beings that we don't even actually contact through our sense powers, because they exist in other realities than that.

So this thing called Bodhichitta, it has within it this deep sense of personal responsibility. As our wisdom grows deep enough, we see how that personal responsibility, it's not a burden. It's not something that somebody imposed upon us. It's our own realization that, oh my gosh, my moment-by-moment behavior and way I perceive things is how I create.

We are the creators of our world, our experience. We all share together, our worlds together.

As we're recognizing this connection and this personal responsibility, we come to this deep realization that until this (pointing to herself) perceives its own mind as omniscient, I can't know exactly how to help someone. I don't know exactly how to help them know what to give up and what to take up in order for them to stop recreating their own suffering self in a suffering world.

There's this sequence of developing our Bodhichitta that starts with that renunciation, where it's like, nothing I do ever works to make me happy. What's wrong with this picture?

Then we learn and grow. And then, oh my gosh, everybody's in the same boat. And then, oh my gosh, everything I do to try to be kind, it just falls short. But it's not really the deeds that fall short. It's my misunderstanding that makes the deeds fall short.

So as our wisdom is growing, it's not so much that our Bodhichitta means that we go searching for opportunities to throw ourselves into the river to save the drowning person.

It's a different state of mind that we go through our day with that makes holding the door open for somebody with packages in their arms as the cause for our Bodhichitta.

So it's not that there's non-worldly ways we need to act. It's that our perception of ourselves doing those worldly ways is what changes. So we use kindnesses based on, What would be kind if somebody did it for me?-thinking, in order to grow the goodness so that we can grow our understanding of karma and emptiness so that we can grow that wisdom strong enough so that it's in our mind as we hold the door open for the next person with packages in their arms.

Then the same action holding the door open becomes not a worldly kindness, it becomes a kindness through which we will go on to become the one that will stop their suffering forever. You see? So we're trying to grow this state of mind, state of heart that's understanding why we're doing what we're doing, like technically every moment. Which is for me impossible yet, but working on it.

Tonglen is one of those methods.

Bodhichitta is this state of mind where we resolve, no matter how long it takes, to reach our total enlightenment so that we can have this omniscience through which we can know really how to help others stop their suffering forever. Without omniscience we can't do it. Without the emanations we can't do it.

So we're growing both our omniscience and our ability, our emanation being.

(68:41) Classically there are two methods of growing our Bodhichitta.

One is called…

The 7 Step Cause and Effect Method

…of which there are eight steps, true to Gelugpa.

There's a preliminary in which we cultivate the mind of equanimity, and it's a long story, but what it means is growing our concern for other's suffering to include everyone equally, to want to end the suffering of all beings, whether we like them or not, whether we find them to be pleasant or not.

This equanimity is, it doesn't matter whether I like them or not, I still want their happiness, ultimate happiness.

It's a hard state of mind to get, to reach. They say, we want to be at that state before we even start growing our Bodhichitta, because Bodhichitta is not Bodhichitta if we're Bodhichitt-ing only the ones we already love. They're easy to care about. 

Ones we don't love are challenging.

So we grow this equanimity first. Equanimity does not mean I will be like a robot and retreat everybody the same. It means I will love everybody no matter what. Harder, a lot harder, easier to be robot.

In the seven step cause and effect method, once we have this equanimity, then the teachings say, okay, so now next, recognize that every being was at some point your mother in some past life. That mind stream that's in that body now was my mother once upon a time–not once upon a time she was my mother. That being now is someone who was my mom before. And so just like my mom now, I love her, she's gone, but if she were here, I would love to take care of her.

Once we establish all these beings are my moms, then it goes to, well, they benefited me so much, and so I really want to repay them. And the way I can repay them is to try to help them be happy. But I can't help them be happy until I try to remove their suffering. But oh my gosh, I can't really remove their suffering until I really know what it is. So we reach this level of personal responsibility, but our personal responsibility is blocked by our inability to really know how to help them, because our worldly ways fall short.

We hit this personal responsibility and then it's like, well, until I'm enlightened, my efforts are just going to fall short. I have to reach Buddhahood in order to benefit all those mothers.

It's seven step cause and effect method. It means we need to know or believe about past and future lives. Not everybody relates to the ‘everybody's my mother’ thing.

Exchanging Self and Others

There's a second method. The second method is called exchanging self and others. 

Exchanging self and others does not require a belief in past or future lives. It does not require, they've been all my mothers. How can they be my mother? I didn't even like my mother. It doesn't require any of that.

It just requires recognizing that people are suffering and to recognize that other people are suffering actually requires the platform of recognizing that we ourselves are suffering.

I mean, to be in a class like this means we are in a certain circumstance in which we have safety. We have freedom. We have enough that our needs are met. Like we have pretty great lives compared to most. And, oh, you know, yeah, I get headaches. I had a I don't like it when they do that, right? My friends call it first world problems, right? We complain about all kinds of stuff and come on, we've got it made. But we don't, because we're using up all that goodness as we moan about it, as we experience it, and it's hard to do enough kindness to stay ahead of the ballgame.

With Tonglen, it is necessary to really look at our own distresses and recognize that they're indicators of what other beings are experiencing, and then expand our concern to others. Because if it's painful enough to be me and my life is like sweet compared to most, then, oh my gosh, how horrible it must be to be somebody in a war zone or who's in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just human, let alone animal, let alone the other beings. Anybody remember that ACI course 8, that everybody goes, I don't want to take course 8. It's so horrible about the hell realms and the hungry ghosts. But we need to know. We need to know.

So second type, second method of learning, of growing our Bodhichitta is this practice called exchanging self and others. DAKSHEN NYAM JE, is the Tibetan phrase.

DAKSHEN NYAM JE

DAK = self

SHEN = other

NYAM JE = exactly the same

So technically it means self, other, exactly the same. But they translated at first as exchanging self and others, meaning myself–DAK, in its ignorant…, like DAK implies the ignorantness of myself. It means me first. My needs, my safety, my perception, everything. Me is like the center of the universe and everything's coming at it. DAK.

SHEN, other, all the other that's coming at me.

Then NYAM JE, actually meaning equal, means everybody's perceiving themselves in that same way, even the gnat. And it's all mistaken because that isn't really how we exist. Not that we don't exist at all.

At the beginning level of DAKSHEN NYAM JE, they say exchanging self and others in the sense that we're learning to exchange our constant self concern with a few moments of concern for the other ahead of my own self for just a little bit of time.

It comes to us in three different levels of practice:

1. Observing the other and give them what they want

The first level of practice, it's taught to the kids in the monastery when they first go.

Kids enter the monastery when they're about seven years old. And immediately they're involved in when a sponsor or a visitor comes to the monastery, the kids are there to help welcome the visitor, to take care of the visitor. 

So they're taught, when you're with one of those visitors–who's probably a supporter or a potential supporter–the kids are taught, watch the visitor's eyes. Where their eyes go, that's a clue for what they're interested in, what they want. You just watch their eyes. If you see it landing on the bowl of fruit again and again, just go pick a piece of fruit, cut it up for them and go serve it to them. Don't ask, just do.

If their eyes going to the teapot, make them a cup of tea. They get good at just watching and deducing from what they perceive, what their visitor might like and then serving.

Maybe you go visit and the one young man is there. He's watching you. He serves you a cup of tea. In that first visit, he goes, would you like milk in your tea? And you say yes. Then you visit again a couple months later and that same young man is in the kitchen. He greets you and he serves you a cup of tea with milk without even asking, because he's trained to care enough to remember you and what you liked.

Now, maybe on this day, you didn't want milk in your tea. Doesn't matter, right?

Your own feeling is, oh my gosh, that kid remembered me. It feels good, doesn't it?  Even if they got it wrong. We might think, well, you know, they train those kids to be psychic. They can read your mind. No, they're just watching, observing.

So, in this first level of exchanging self and others, it's training ourselves to pay attention enough to the others that we are around to watch them and just logically deduce what they might like. Then, if it's moral safe, within our vows, see if we can provide it for them.

Put on their favorite music. Yeah, but I hate jazz. It doesn't matter what you like. To put on their favorite music, whether you like it or not, plants seeds for the things that come to you, be the things that you find pleasurable.

Well, this Bodhichitta thing, it is so selfish because all you're doing is things to make other people happy in order to make you happy. Yeah, well, what's wrong with that?

You make a ton of people happy, or you're just trying anyway, based on what it feels like for yourself to get a little bit of pleasure. What other motivation would we have?

Oh, I'm going to make everybody happy so that I can stay miserable. Like we wouldn't do it. It isn't selfish to use our growing wisdom to help people get happier, knowing that that in the end will bring us happiness. That should be our motivation.

His Holiness calls it educated self-interest, wise self-interest, because it makes us turn our focus onto what would help somebody else.

Now, can we bring somebody happiness? No, not in the moment.

Can we try? Yes.

You know, when I was trying to publish Puppy Pen Chew Toy book, I had this wonderful editor. She was so sweet, and the book impacted her a lot. But she kept coming to me. She says, you keep saying, try to do this. Try to do that. She goes, you need to change that language. You need to say ‘you do this’ and ‘you do that’. I said, yeah, but we can't actually bring about the things we're wanting to bring about. We can only try to do it. That's the whole point of the book, that it's the trying that makes the seed that makes the result later. She finally goes, oh, I get it, and she let me put trying back in the book. It's really a different mindset, because it used to be trying would dilute things. It meant, well, not really. But in this tradition, all we need to do is try. Which makes things so much more possible to me that I can try and fail to do a kindness, and I still planted a good seed.

I ripened a bad seed if the person I was kind to gets mad at me for doing what I did.

I ripened a getting mad at somebody for trying to be kind to me seed. And then it's done.

Which tells me, be grateful for people's attempts at kindness, whether you like it or not. Doesn't mean you have to stay there and take more of it. But if we reject people's kindness, we're going to have our own kindness be rejected and don't have your feelings hurt. Right? It happened, because we do it.

So this first level of growing Bodhichitta, DAKSHEN NYAM JE is just care enough to pay attention to see if you can predict what people want, what they need.

We all know what people need in the grocery store. People want to get to the can of beans without having to reach around you. So step aside. Be aware, am I standing in front of the peanut butter and I'm in the way of the person? Is my cart in the middle of the aisle instead of over to the side? It's so easy, really, to be... It's just plain consideration. But now we're cranking up our awareness a little bit. In the level of our consideration of others, first level.

2. Put yourself into the other

Second level. It's described to us by Master Shantideva coming up in course 11 soon. It's a form of exchanging self and others whereby we try to actually be aware of the impact we are having on the other in the moment, so that our behavior towards them in the moment can be better informed with love than the usual selfishness. 

It's a little bit tricky.

The idea is, the person that you're with, you imagine that you can be inside them experiencing yourself.

How are they experiencing me right now? And how would they like to experience me right now?

Once we've established feeling like maybe we have a sense of what they'd like me to do, then you go back into your own you, and you do that thing.

Like, maybe I'd be able to put myself into Sylvia and go, Sylvia is wanting me to quit repeating myself. Then it's like, okay, I'm going to get on with class here. Because I know that's what would please Sylvia. Then I'm limited because I can only do Sylvia, and then Victor, and then Pia. I can't do all of you at once, yet. Which helps me grow the, man, I've got to be omniscient, right? So that I can do the same for everybody at the same time.

It feels like, I mean, like psychology would say, don't do that. Don't put yourself into somebody else. That's not healthy. But in this practice, the idea is we're really trying to get a sense of our impact on others, and to care enough to want to impact them, not just to avoid upsetting them, but to actually be able to be what would help them. 

Like really just exactly the right thing.

Can we really get into somebody and know their mind or heart? Not until we're omniscient. But we can imagine it. 

Again, our intuition will kick in just like the kids' intuition, watching your eyes. Our intuition will kick in, and we may surprise ourselves and them extraordinarily from time to time. It'll help us grow our confidence that we really can act from a place of awareness of our impact on others, and so choose our behavior accordingly.

On automatic pilot, we don't have this big concern about our impact on others. 

We do, of course. We don't just walk over beings. But we're trying to grow this sense of, how is it that my just being with you can be a peaceful, pleasant, safe, uplifting, wisdom-growing experience without me saying, sit down, I want to tell you about the pen thing. Just by my presence with you.

You know how sometimes you find yourself in like just the right place at the right time for somebody, and you didn't plan it out, and they didn't plan it out. But all of a sudden, it's just like you are exactly what they needed.

And it feels so good. It feels so good when it happens the other way around. Somebody just shows up at the right place at the right time.

Sometimes I'm walking home, and it's hot outside, and I'm especially tired, and there's no place to sit down. And I think I don't know if I'm going to make it home. And so, you know, a friend drives up. It's like, Hi, Sarahni, you want to ride home? Yes, thank you. You know, my angel for the day. And they go, great, right? They feel good. I feel good. 

How is that created? By this recognition that we are for others exactly what they need. 

Now, technically, we are always that aren't we?

Like I am the ripening of your seeds right now.

So I am exactly what you created. I am exactly what you need right now. And you are the same for me. But we don't go through our day like that, do we?

It's dangerous, because we could go through it going, I am exactly what you need right now. And so, I can yell at you, I can step in front, I can do anything I want, because I'm exactly what you need. That's wrong conclusion. Because what's that gonna make for me and my future of other beings being exactly what I need that coming at me?

So this being exactly what I need, when we get it right, it's like, wow, then I have this opportunity to be for them, what will be pleasant and peaceful and sweet and enjoyable. 

And if I don't feel like I can be that out in my outer world today, well, then maybe I should just stay home, and maybe…

Tonglen-ing is this tool through which when we are meeting up with a situation where it's like, I can't help, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I see suffering. I want to do something. I'm breathing. I can Tonglen, as opposed to I can't look, I can't go there. Because I can't really help.

It opens our heart to be able to be more engaged with distressing situations that we're used to closing our heart against. Because we can always Tonglen.

Doesn't mean you have to step into the middle of that horrible situation, yet.

But we don't have to ignore it either. Exchanging self and others.

3. Dissolve the boundary between me and other

(95:02) So now there's a third level of exchanging self and other which is more accurate to what DAKSHEN NYAM JE really means, which is self, other, equal. Not one in the same–equal. Self, other, NYAM, equal, NYAM JE. 

In this one, Geshe-la describes it as, in our ignorant way of being, we have a belief in the boundaries between us. Me stops here. You stops there. There's a space in between, in which we interact.

In the two previous DAKSHEN NYAM JEs, we're using that space in between to choose more kind interactions, more caring interactions.

In this third level of DAKSHEN NYAM JE, we decide, I'm gonna drop those boundary. Geshe-la calls it there's like a rope around. There's a rope between us, a wall. 

He says, take that rope, and instead of putting it between us, flip it around the other person you're with. Tie it behind you. So now you're both inside this circle of being.

Now it's that there's one being that has two heads, two mouths, four arms, four feet.

And you decide, me, I'm the one that will take care of all four arms, all four feet, both mouths.

To hear that, we think, no way, right? Nice idea, can't do it. Because come on, that's too much. Just one other seems too much. What, I won't eat till they eat? I need new shoes, so I have to buy two pairs of shoes? Like, wait a minute, how does this really work? It's not possible.

Master Shantideva, this is his favorite. He goes, look, our minds reject this merely because we don't really want to do it. He says, you already do it. If you had kids, you did it when your child was a baby. Right?

You put that baby's needs like ahead of your own, actually. You knew what it needed. You took care of it first. It was a part of you. If someone insulted or harmed the baby, it was as if they harmed you. Now that baby grows up, and they separate. Your love stays, of course, but your sense of still taking care of them in the way you did when they were small, they take on buying their own shoes and paying their own rent. They grow up, that's what they're supposed to do. The separation happens.

So we have already had experience of defining ourselves in a bigger way if we've had kids. Maybe if we've even had pets, we might have done it with our pets.

He says we even do it with our material things, where you finally get that brand new car. You've gone to the shopping mall, the cars in the car park, you come out and as you're walking by all the other cars, they've all been vandalized. And you're going, Oh, man, that's terrible. They better not have done that to my car. Like ‘my car’. That's too bad they did it to those, but my car, right? It's like some personal affront, if they did it to my car. Our me has included our car, which is crazy.

Then a third example he gives is that, if our definition of our self really was limited to the me and my body as I know it now, then if your foot gets gangrene, and you have to amputate it, it would mean your whole identification of yourself would have to be different now that you're missing one foot. You would have to change to a different person. And you don't, he says. You're still you, just you with one foot instead of two.

So if you can do it, if you can redefine yourself, and still be you, still function if you lose a foot, if your definition of you can include your car, and if your definition of you could include your child, who's now separate from you, but you still love them in that same way, then the only reason we're saying, I can't exchange myself for my neighbor, I can't include my neighbor in me. He said, we're only rejecting that because we don't really want to do it. And we don't really want to do it because we don't care enough about them.

Still my mind says, look from where I can sit, I can see like 10 neighbors. So does that mean when I make oatmeal, I should make 10 bowls of oatmeal, and take them out to my neighbors before I sit down to eat oatmeal? It's hard. It's like I would never get back to my oatmeal because that neighbor likes to talk, and I would sit there and talk with them. And that neighbor…, right? It's like I'd never get to eat.

But we just need to work out that conundrum.

I'm not saying don't eat until everybody in your building has eaten. But keep it in mind as you eat, as you sit down to eat. Like I'm home, I'm by myself almost all day, nowadays. Sumati is in his room, I see him about four times a day. The rest of the time, I'm all by myself. But that doesn't mean I'm not interacting with my world. Gets a little tricky.

(student: So can I ask something? Did I understood it right. So it's more about the quality of interaction, not about the quantity, right?)

Yes. Right. It's what's on our mind, as we are doing our deed, and then but then that brings up the point. Well, then, what, why do deeds matter at all? If it's, if it's what's on my mind, like if it's a motivation, and state of mind, what does it matter what I do? And it and it's a little dangerous, right? Because technically, it doesn't matter what you do. But it does matter, because all the while we're planting seeds, and what we do, even with our good, good motivation, is still going to come back to us, done by somebody with a good motivation. So let's just like go to the worst case scenario, right? We decide that person is so damaging our world so badly, that with love in my heart, I should go kill them, and I do it. I do it clearly identifying I have all four factors in mind, and I'm saying I'm doing it in order to protect everybody, I am still going to have a future experience–probably more than one–of somebody with a good motivation, cutting my life short. If that's okay with me, then okay, I would go ahead and kill that person. If that's not going to be okay with me, then I should not do that deed, that I'm thinking my good motivation, my Tonglen, my Bodhichitta motivation is saying I can get away with what I do, right? If we think we're getting away with something, don't do it.

The point of having high motivation is that suppose I have flowers that I'm going to give to my Aunt Mary, and I could give them to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. They say, to give the same flowers to His Holiness is a greater goodness than giving them to Aunt Mary, even though Aunt Mary would probably enjoy them daily for a while, His Holiness will see them once and then never again. But because of the power of the karmic object, the same deed creates a different kind of seed for me.

Then the power of the motivation also influences that seed. As I'm giving my flowers to Aunt Mary, I can be thinking, may Aunt Mary have a week's worth of pleasure from these flowers. That's nice. Or I can be saying, by way of giving these flowers to Aunt Mary, may Aunt Mary become my student someday so that I can help her end her suffering forever. Or I could say, by giving these flowers to Aunt Mary, may we both become total Buddhas in order to create pure world for everybody.

Same flowers, same deed, different seed planting, because different state of mind. When our mind is imbued with Bodhichitta, then everything we do becomes a cause for our Buddhahood. We learn that in ACI Course 2.

Because everything we do is imbued with this mind: I'm doing this to reach Buddhahood.

I'm tying my child's shoes in order to reach Buddhahood.

How does tying shoes make you Buddha?

Simply by the motivation.

But we still don't lie, cheat, steal, kill, sexually misconduct with Bodhichitta, because those things will come back to us done by somebody with Bodhichitta and we won't like it. So we have our vowed behavior, we have our guidelines for behavior, to help us not fool ourselves as our Bodhichitta is growing into thinking, oh, well, then I can do anything I want because I've got this great motivation.

But if our motivation was so great, we wouldn't want to do those things that are hurtful. Even if it looks like that's what seems to be necessary. There must be another way to get the same result than killing that person. There must be some other way.

Two Kinds of Love

There's two preparatory states of mind that are necessary for our Bodhichitta to grow. Those two are JAMPA and NYINGJE. 

JAMPA in Sanskrit is Maitri, which is the basis for the name Maitreya,--comes out of the word Maitri. It means love.

Love meaning ‘I want you to be happy’. I want your happiness. Not meaning I don't want it for myself. I want you to have it. I want your happiness.

NYINGJE, meaning compassion, Karuna in Sanskrit.

Years ago, before I met Buddhism, I was studying theosophy. My theosophy group, in that group was a woman named Grace. She was about 20 years older than me. Oh, she was so wonderful. We became good friends. She had a son who had a daughter whose name was Carrie. We all called her Carrie, and one day, my friend Grace, Carrie showed up, and my friend Grace goes, Oh, it's so nice to see you, Karuna. And I said, Karuna? Like I'd never heard that word before. She goes, Yeah, you know, Carrie is short for Karuna. Then I thought, Oh, that's a beautiful name, odd, but beautiful.

Then 10 years later, I'm learning Sanskrit, and it's like, Karuna, it means compassion. Like, how did my friend Grace's son know the word Karuna to name his daughter compassion? Isn't that beautiful? I don't know the answer to that. But every time I see the word Karuna, I think of that.

So they say that NYINGJE, compassion, this is another form of love.

Like we make the distinction love is: I want your you to be happy.

Compassion is: I want to take your suffering away. Because you can't really be happy, as long as you're still suffering.

But underneath the: I want to take your compassion away, is that ‘I want to do that for you’. And that's love.

Our ordinary state of mind is this: Here's me. I want even when we're saying I want to avoid, aversion, it's still an ‘I want’. I want for me to not have that happen. I want for me to have that happen. It's a pulling in a grasping in.

The state of mind of love, the state of heart of love is a going out. It's still an ‘I want’, we use the word ‘I want’, I wish there was a different word. Because the ‘I want your happiness, I want the end of your suffering’ is an outflowing energy, instead of a in grasping energy. That's significant for our subtle body, for our understanding. It's significant for our understanding of what it is to be Buddha me and Buddha paradise emanating, this sense, the shift from incoming to out going. 

This practice of expanding self to include others, growing our Bodhichitta is a seed planting tool for making this shift from incoming to outgoing.

We can kind of get a glimpse of how that's connected from the SIRTONG to PAKPA, of understanding where our world's actually coming from. There are all these little clues that when we're learning our sutra is planting these seeds for realizations to come as we gain access to the faster path, the Vajrayana, the Diamond Way path. Tonglen is one of those methods that simply by learning to use our breath, which has this harmonic resonance with the subtle winds of our inner body, in order to act in ways that are more kind, more loving, more helpful in circumstances that we otherwise would avoid, because there, we can't do anything, helps plant the seeds for when the time comes, our ability to practice what's called creation stage and completion stage will have seeds for it.

Tonglen practice is all done in our imagination, and we think, I'm just pretending. As we plant seeds of pretending, it seems like when those seeds ripen, they'll just be ripening of pretending. The more complete our pretending seeds are, the more complete those pretending seeds ripen. 

How complete do they need to be for pretending to not be pretending anymore?

Is our reality really anything other than pretending?

Maybe we could call projections pretending, and maybe that would make more sense. But the point is, Tonglen practice is a pretending practice done in our imagination that helps us plant seeds for the swifter practices to come to us all that much sooner in the form of the creation stage of Diamond Way, which is all pretending practice, that can itself bring about the result. And if it doesn't, then there's completion stage practices, where we do something more radical using our subtle body, which the Tonglen practice is planting seeds for as well, because we're tying our pretend to our breath.

So it's a setup for helping you reach your Buddhahood in a one lifetime, whether it's this lifetime or another one. Tonglen practice is secretly helping you move along your path in such a simple, beautiful way–whether we know it or not.

If that makes you feel manipulated, I'm so sorry.

The idea is we can learn and be attracted to Tonglen and not know any of this stuff, the details about it, or we can learn and practice Tonglen fully informed with what's going on, and our Tonglen just increases in power that way.

(student: So I'm pretending, sorry. Pretending has this negative touch, but in Tonglen, I don't think it's not a negative touch. Or in the other thing, it's a kind of the motivation that I lay into the Tonglen, right? So I can pretend, of course, but it's not my motivation. So I try to, let me better call it, it's a simulation to be prepared in a real situation to be enabled or to be able to act like a good boy or like a good man.)

Yes. So simulation would be a good word. It's a simulation.

(student: It's a little bit like kids do it. So they play it and in a play situation, they train themselves to be then in the right moment with the right reactions. I would more understand.)

Exactly. Like by pretend, right? So maybe it's pretend a better word? I understand that that has this negative connotation as adults. I'm pretending, it means I'm faking it. I'm trying to pull something over on you. And that's not how we're using it. But I appreciate hearing that, that, that could be the connotation.

JAMPA and NYINGJE, these two kinds of love are the states of mind, I put here mind, that helps us grow our Bodhichitta and the way we act on those love and compassion feelings is by Tonglen-ing, so that we can actually do something when we feel loving compassion. Because most of the time we just are like, no, I'm too busy, or I don't have enough money, or I can't. We can always Tonglen.

I'm out of time. I'm going to put my clip here for you guys, because we need to talk about what comes first, love or compassion. I don't want to rush it so you can think about it. So please spend a little bit of time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, doesn't have to be in your formal meditation time. If you have other things you're doing, but Tonglen your future-you every day, tomorrow's-you, or next week's-you, and kind of make a note about your tomorrow's-you when you get there and see how to go. We'll talk about it.

Dedication

Remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We've learned a lot that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's a great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself. And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious holy being. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them. Your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close to continue to guide you and help you and inspire you. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accepted and blessed. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom may. So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person. To share it with everyone you love. To share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with loving kindness, filled with wisdom. And may it be so.

Thank you everybody for the opportunity to share. Thank you for the opportunity to learn.  

All right, welcome back. We are the Tonglen practice module group. This is class three. It's November 14th, 2025. We'll do our opening prayers and then learn some more about the practice and then do a meditation session this time.

So let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Class Opening]

The Benefits of the Tonglen Practice

(8:00) All right, so let's hear about the benefits of doing Tonglen.

You know, in our world, it seems like there are some people who just naturally have this great compassion, this great love. In my time, I think of Mother Teresa, and I read an interview once. The journalist asked her, how is it that you manage to go and care for those lepers the way you do? With leprosy, it's a really awful appearing disease and painful, and it's contagious. Not that everybody gets it, but you risk getting it yourself by touching people with leprosy. So, the journalist is saying, how do you do it?

Mother's answer was like, I don't understand your question. It's like, I love them, so I care for them. And that's all she said.

It really struck me that it's like, whoa, that's a state of heart, a kind of love that, I don't know, I just had never come across that before. 

Then we can think now, you know, unfortunately she's gone. Are there people now in our world that love like that? I'm sure there are. I don't know any personally. But we hear, we hear examples like that.

I'm really inspired and I admire them. And then I automatically compare myself and I find myself so puny and inadequate. It's a mistaken view.

Buddhism says, look, nobody is born with that kind of love inherent in them. Maybe Mother Teresa was born with that love, but it meant that some previous lifetime she learned it and she trained in it. And in this life it ripened as this deep personal quality that seemed to be inherent in her, perhaps.

Buddhism says there's nothing we can't learn if we make a new habit of it, just by practice. Small steps, training will bring about a goal.

We've all probably done it, right? We've at some point set ourselves up with a goal, learning to play piano, learning to do a sport well enough to maybe compete, learning to dance ballet maybe. We go to learn how to do so.

The teacher, the coach says, okay, do these skills, play your scales in your sport, do your skills.

No, no, I want to play volleyball.

Yeah, in order to play, you have to learn these skills. In order to learn these skills, you do them over and over and over again.

We want our goal enough that we say, okay. And we do the skill and we do the skill and we do the skill, and before too long, well, we can play the song on the piano, right? We can actually play a match. We can actually dance a dance.

So yes, there are some who hear it and can do it, see it and can do it. But that isn't because of some spontaneous thing happening. It's because in some past life, they applied themselves to the skill.

So this learning love, becoming a being who is skilled at loving is something that we can train in by way of doing the skills.

And guess what the skills are? Tonglen practice. Just sitting on our cushion with the state of mind of who is it that I know who's having trouble right now? And gosh, I wish I could help them.

I know in my worldly life, I don't have the capacity. But sitting here on my cushion, I can have the capacity, I can grow in my heart-mind, enough love for them to imagine that I could just reach in and take it out. And while I'm doing it, I will destroy my own selfishness and misunderstanding, which is the real cause of the pain and suffering I'm seeing in that other person anyway.

It's not ordinary human behavior to think about other people's pain and distress, especially when we're going into a meditation. It's like meditation is to calm my mind. Meditation is to investigate my mind. 

That's true in a sense, but it only works if we have the karmic seeds for it to work. When we sit down on our cushion with our mind turned to somebody else's distress, whether the somebody else is me in the future, or the somebody else is my spouse, neighbor, somebody I heard about, I don't even know, somebody I heard about that I really don't even like. All these different categories of beings that just to have the idea of turning our minds to their problem, their suffering, to be aware of it enough to have the feeling, I wish they weren't having that. It takes a little bit of understanding karma and emptiness to really grow this feeling, I wish they didn't have it.

Because in ordinary human viewpoint, it's like they just have that suffering, that's their fault, their condition, nothing I can do about it. Or at worst, it's like, well, they deserve that. They're the one that didn't work hard in school, they're the one that robbed the bank, like we almost are happy they're having that problem.

So just decide to spend a little time deeply investigating somebody else's pain, that alone is extraordinary, it's an extraordinary shift in our mindset of growing our compassion and our love.

(17:00) Then, with our understanding of karma and emptiness and this training in the skills, we think, well, I can just fantasize about being able to take their suffering away, use it to destroy my ignorance–the real enemy, and then imagine that I could give them all kinds of goodness and happiness. We are still making mental imprints as we're doing that.

They say, technically we don't ever have to directly interact with the person we're Tonglen-ing in order for, how do I say it? For us and them to benefit from the Tonglen. Because as our seeds change, how we see them in the world changes.

It's like, when I hear myself say that, I can feel this train of thought that goes, yeah, so the one I see stops suffering, but what about them? Do they stop seeing them suffering?

But see, that's coming from lower understanding of karma and emptiness. Lower understanding of dependent origination says when I Tonglen, I'll just change my seeds to see them, but it won't change their seeds to see them. But when we get to Higher School, it's like what them is there other than the one I see?

Yeah, but if our mind falls off the cliff of, oh, well, then all those others, they don't really exist, because they're just my fantasy, we've fallen off the cliff of, well, because they're my seeds ripening, they don't really exist cliff. Which isn't true. Because they are my seeds ripening, they are very real. You are all my seeds ripening and you are very real.

Then you go away from class and I'm not aware of you directly the way I am aware of you now, but technically you're still in my seeds ripening. Because I've ever seen you, and known you, and loved you.

This class isn't about delving into what level of karma and emptiness are we doing our Tonglen on, doesn't matter. The very fact that we have a heart that says, wow, maybe that would be a cool practice, to be able to rely on just my thinking and breathing to try to take somebody's pain. We know that the way that seed planting and seed ripening happens, that you can't get a result in the very next moment of what you just did. That it takes time for our results from our current action to show up. 

So, if we're expecting that when I Tonglen somebody, that the next time I see them, they'll say, oh, my cancer's gone, we'll be disappointed when they don't say that. But when we Tonglen for the sake of doing the skills of being able to grow our love, when we see them again and they say, oh, you know, I'm going for my third radiation treatment. I'm so miserable. You go, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And you think, all right, more Tonglen material. Rather than being disappointed, oh, my Tonglen's not working.

The promise with Tonglen is that we change our own heart over time in such a way that our love is so big that even when we hear someone say, this, this, this is a problem, we'll automatically see something beautiful in it and help them recognize some goodness that they've got.

We probably all have people like that in our lives that they just can't see ugliness anywhere. They're just so positive that all they talk about is the good things in life. All they talk about is other people's good qualities. I've got a friend like that, my dear friend, Mary Nelson. She says, I know people say I'm just a Pollyanna. And it's like, please don't stop being Pollyanna. It's so refreshing. It's so delightful to be around her. She's going blind with macular degen, her husband died a year or two ago. It's not like her life is free of distress. It's that the distress gets automatically turned into something else for her. She's not Buddhist, right? She's just amazing.

We can learn, we can become like that—not just by wishing it, but by changing our seeds. And how, what's one way to do it? Tonglen practice. Because of how it's designed and how it works.

1. Tonglen is making powerful mental karma

Geshe-la says, we shape our reality by doing Tonglen on our cushion. It's not, he says, it's not unreal. It's not imaginary, although it seems to be, but it doesn't work the way we think it does, which is why it can work. Once we understand that, we can be confident in our doing of Tonglen without even having to look for the results. Either our own results or somebody else's results. We understand Tonglen practice so well.

He says, this is how to create paradise, and we share it with others.

Tonglen practice will lead to our ability to teach others how to stop their suffering, their death, their illness, and their forced rebirth someday.

Tonglen is this foundational practice for creating our own total enlightenment, our own omniscience, our own emanation being. That's why to do it. Why to build Tonglen into your practice.

So the main reason, like its main benefit is that we're working at the level of mental karma when we are Tonglen-ing. Mental karma is said to be a more powerful level of karma than speech karma or body karma, doing karma.

It seems backwards, right? It seems like, no, no, thinking something isn't so powerful. It's when you say and do that you can actually impact somebody. But really, what we say and do does not impact somebody in the way that we hope or the way that we think. And we wouldn't say or do anything without the movement of the mind, the mental karma that propels what we say and or do afterwards. So it's the mental karma that's more powerful than the other two.

What is karma?

Movement of the mind and what it motivates.

Karma is really the word for that process of what happens to move the mind and what it motivates, and then what happens as that happens. Meaning the imprints that are being made.

So when we say mental karma, it underlies all of our physical and speech karma, as I say. Losing my train of thought…

2. Tonglen decreases our selfishness

(28:14) That mental movement of the mind for those of us still stained with ignorance are always colored with a kind of selfishness that makes us compare ourselves to the other. Then our response, like the early mental response will either be some level of jealousy, some level of ill will, and underneath both of those, some level of wrong view.

Those mental afflictions can grow to be really big ones. Jealousy, why did they get that raise? I should have gotten that raise. That could go on to actions of speech and body in which we feel justified to somehow interfere with the happiness that they got from getting that raise. It would lead to divisive speech, harsh speech, who knows what kind of physical karma. But it stemmed from this movement of the mind of comparing ourself to other, and then upset with some amount, some little bit of happiness somebody got.

The other tendency is seeing somebody in a situation and feeling either not caring about some problem they're having, or outright thinking, well, they just deserve that. That ill will that's on some level enjoying someone getting something negative, experiencing something negative. That can go all the way to a wishing bad on somebody. They're a horrible person. They should get thrown in jail. They should… wishing bad things and getting some kind of satisfaction from someone we don't like having some unpleasant experience, right?

As a Bodhisattva, aspiring Bodhisattva, those two states of mind are really ugly. They are the habits that we're wanting to overcome in order to grow our Bodhisattvahood, or they're what's necessary to overcome, to grow our Bodhisattvahood.

They are just states of mind attitudes that come up. Even if we don't let ourselves act on them, the very awareness of being a little unhappy with somebody else's success has already replanted seeds that are growing. So we'll feel that way more.

And we'll see people in our world feeling that way towards others. So even if we don't act from our jealousy, we grow it.

Even if we don't act from our ill will, we grow it.

And it's all of course born from the misunderstanding that it's all coming out of my own past imprints made before I knew any better.

Even past imprints made once I did know better, but I couldn't…, right? We don't really have control over our mental karma like we do our physical and speech behavior yet, most of us.

We can learn by way of planting the seeds, by way of doing the skills.

What skill? Tonglen, is a good one. It's like a really all-encompassing, beautiful, exquisite practice.

So these two, being unhappy when others get something they want, and being happy when others are having misfortune. If you turn those to the opposite, you have what we're doing in Tonglen. The seeds we're planting in Tonglen. Because we are deciding we will be unhappy with the problem we're seeing in the other. And willing to mentally take it from them. And then wanting to be happy with their happiness, we turn and give them happiness.

In our body, actions, and speech, we can try to do those things. And maybe they'll work, maybe they won't.

In our mental karma, on our cushion, we can try and we can see it happen.

Oh, it's all in my fantasy, it's not really happening.

Oh, it's all in my mental seeds.

It's gonna happen someday. Because those seeds are gonna ripen.

So yes, I'm not taking their pain right now. But we are taking their pain. Because we're destroying our seeds to see people with pain around us. So we work on that one, and we work on this one, and we work on that one.

As it starts to ripen, those ones may not be the ones that we see improving. But others, it's like harder and harder to find people. If we're working on anybody with cancer, for instance, it's like at first, there's so many. Then we work on this one, and then that one. I don't know what happens to their cancer. But then by the time you get out to looking for other people with cancer, it's like, well, no, I haven't heard of anybody with a new diagnosis in a long time.

What's happened? Our seeds have changed.

Same for working on somebody who's really angry. Angry people. Where'd all the angry people go?

Over time, not tomorrow, not the next day, but over time.

3. Our love and happiness grow

Worldview begets worldview, says Geshe Michael. Physical karma begets physical karma.

We do stealing. The result of that is we don't have enough. We can't get our needs met.

We kill, the result, we're gonna get killed.

Speech karma is similar.

Mental karma is, we do mental karma, we experience more of that mental karma, and we experience people around us with similar of that mental karma.

I don't know what your mental karma is. I can't read your mind. By watching your body language, et cetera, I can make assumptions about what you're thinking, what you're feeling, but I don't really know. It's still true that for me to build people in my world who are more like Mary Nelson and Mother Teresa and less like somebody else, I need to do it, right? I need to change my seeds for what I see in my world.

It's like, yeah, but it's too big. I can't contact everybody?

But in our Tonglen practice, we are unlimited. There's no one we can't work on, work with, just by sitting down and setting it up in our mind to do so.

We start with those we are familiar with. We start with those that we already love so that when we think of their distress, our heart already opens up, and it's like, oh man, I wish they didn't have to have that, right? Like a parent for their child, when they're having one of those situations that we all go through as kids growing up and you know as the parent that this is no big disaster, but the poor kid is like, ah. And your heart just goes, oh honey, it's gonna be okay. Because you know, it's so minor, but for them, it's the biggest thing in the world. So we don't discount it. We love it. We love it away. You kiss their boo-boo and they get better. Same, same with, it's like Tonglen is this beautiful Buddhist kiss the boo-boo practice and they get better, all designed to grow our heart. We are growing our Bodhichitta, and it's through our Bodhichitta that we're able to bring the world to freedom from suffering.

(39:15) In our worldview begets worldview, we work so hard to understand highest worldview. Nothing is anything except by way of my seeds ripening, making it what it is for me. And all those beings that make up our world, all they want is to love and be loved unconditionally. That's all we want. When we're Tonglen-ing and the instruction is, try to get their suffering as specific as you can, so that you get the seeds for their suffering as accurate as you can. Then as you Tonglen and destroy it, you're destroying your own similar seeds and your ignorance. Then when we're giving the goodness. We're gonna give happiness that's very specific. 

Deep down, what we're taking is all these obstacles to their own loving and being loved. What we will be giving them is these qualities of love, loving, and feeling loved. When we feel loved, we can love. When we love, we feel loved. 

It's this beautiful circle, which comes first? Where's my Arya Nagarjuna investigators? It's like neither comes first. They're both two sides of a coin, and we all know what it feels like to be the one who loves another enough to give them comfort and to be the one who's the recipient of somebody's love.

Which feels better? You really can't say, I'll do this and not that.

When we try to be the loving one, we're just gonna get it back. And actually that happens quite quickly.

Where will that loving, growing loving come from?

We can't really just turn it on by willpower. We can when we're in a pleasant situation, but it's very hard in the midst of the boss yelling to decide I'm going to be loving. It's hard, we can do it, but it's hard.

We need to train in the skills so that we can perform, and the performance happens when we're out amongst other people. That's when our Tonglen on the cushion helps turn on, open our heart to being more patient, more loving, more understanding, more caring as we go through our world with the other people.

So they say, yes, Tonglen is an on cushion practice, but don't leave it on your cushion. We'll learn that by that, they'll say, look, you're breathing whether you're meditating or not. So you can Tonglen as you breathe.

But they also mean take your Tonglen off the cushion, meaning let your feelings during your Tonglen meditation color you as you go through your day. Because it will then flow through in such a way that you will find yourself rushing to hold the door open for somebody. Leaving that close parking spot for somebody else and taking the one that's further away. It won't be so much of an effort to be thinking of what would make somebody else happy right now?

Doing our actions of body and speech propelled by our Tonglen practice on the cushion, maybe not necessarily that day's Tonglen helps you be happier in the grocery store, but the practice of Tonglen over a period of time will color our hearts such that we will find ourselves more easily more kind. 

When you start to recognize that situations where you ordinarily would get triggered, you surprise yourself and it's like, wow, how come I didn't do the old habitual thing? 

You can attribute it to your Tonglen practice, and then be happy and dedicated and carry on.

(45:40) Arya Nagarjuna says the karmic results of Tonglen-ing is first of all, you'll get happy and you'll get happy all the time.

May not happen tomorrow or the next day. But it's coming just by Tonglen-ing.

4. Spirits, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas are attracted to you

He says too, spirits are attracted to you. I don't really know what this one means. I know people for whom spirits are attracted to them and it's not pleasant. So I don't know if this is a good thing or not. I suspect that what the advantage is that there are also good spirits who can be helpful. Those not so good spirits, they need help too. So maybe it is a good thing to be able to help those spirits get out of their spirit world because you Tonglen them. I don't know. That one's on the shelf for me.

He says also, Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are attracted to you. A Tonglen practitioner gains the attention of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. It's a little funny because come on, Buddhas are omniscient. They're aware of us all the time. But I think of it as I'm just another face in the crowd. Until my own heart-mind is doing something that makes me stand out.

The say, taking Bodhisattva vows is one of those things that makes you stand out in the crowd and then certain actual deeds that we do will make us stand out in the crowd. And then we have the direct attention. I don't know how direct attention's different than omniscient direct attention.

But from our own side, it means we have closer access and so closer accessibility to their guidance and their teachings. Hard to understand that one. 

5. You won‘t have health problems and be safe

(48:27) Next benefit he says is, we will not have health problems. It's like, I'm still waiting for that one to manifest from my Tonglen. But it's nice to hear that it's coming. I don't know how many lifetimes it'll take, but…

Then last one he says, our environment will be safe. So lots of different ways environment can be not safe and safe.

My own experience, when I first learned Tonglen, I was first becoming vegetarian. It was hard. There weren't vegetarian restaurants for sure, and in any given restaurant, you could get a salad or a baked potato, or a cheese enchilada. But that was about all. You couldn't get organic food. Like it was pretty much unheard of.

Then in the, however many years that's been, now my own neighborhood grocery store has organic section. Easy to get organic stuff, and it's not even all that much more expensive, 10 cents, 20 cents more, instead of a dollar, $2 more. It's just like the whole, my whole surroundings have changed.

Yeah, it was gonna change anyway. But I don't know. There are places in the world where they can't get food, let alone organic food. In the timeframe that I was doing my Tonglen, they could get food. So their environment deteriorated, as my immediate environment has gotten better and better. So it is a sign that my practices are doing something. They just seem to only go so far. They go about, I'm gonna say 10 miles radius from me. After that, they start to deteriorate. So I just need to grow my Tonglen practice bigger, right?

The additional factor of the benefit of Tonglen is that fact that while we are doing our mental karma, tagged with our breath, which is a physical karma, our breath has that harmonic resonance with the winds of our subtle body. So we are working at the mental level, the physical level and the subtle physical level, all at the same time. We don't really even have to know it for it to be helping us in that way.

So it's growing our seeds for the practices through which our—I wanna say we're more directly working on creating our Buddha paradise and then learning the practices for transforming our own body, which is the Diamond Way creation stage and completion stage.

But you know, as we back this all out, we've heard if we do our Sutra Lam Rim well enough, the transformation will happen without ever having to do the initiations and the mantras and the Leyrungs.

If our Sutra practice isn't done well enough, finally we go to the next level. If we don't do that well enough, we go to the next level. And we think we're going higher, higher, higher in our practices, but technically we're needing to get more and more drastic because the Sutra we couldn't get it well enough.

And that's most of us, of course, I'm not pointing out some fault in the system. It's an exquisite system. Tonglen is this amazing foundational practice that carries us all the way through to the total transformation into Buddha us, Buddha you and Buddha paradise manifesting.

And really, do you really believe that you can become that?

Do you believe that your Tonglen practice is the basis for that transformation to happen?

We hear it, and we're attracted to it, and in my own mind for a long, long time, it was like, whoa, that is so far away. It just seems like I've got the goal out there, but nowhere near. Then over time, it's like, wait, no, that's not so far away. Wait now.

It comes with the goodness of seed planting.

What's an easy way to plant the seeds? Tonglen, right?

Because Tonglen is based on growing our love, growing our compassion, and that state of mind can understand emptiness and dependent origination in more and more subtle ways because our love is growing. And that has to do with what's happening to our subtle body as we Tonglen.

The source of Tonglen—The Offering to Lamas

(61:26) For our lineage, the source of the Tonglen practice for us is the prayer called The Offering to Lamas by Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, the first Panchen Lama. He did not make it up, of course. Lord Buddha taught Tonglen. Shantideva taught that Tonglen. Others have taught and shared Tonglen Len practice. But in our lineage, we are inspired by this particular prayer, The Lama Chupa, it's called.

Some monasteries use this prayer every two weeks to celebrate those special moon days, the 10th and the 25th, where ordinarily you would use a particular Diamond Way practice text. But they feel that this one is a more powerful way to celebrate that moon day, because it's a text that reminds us of the kindness and power of our student-teacher relationship. It reminds us of the fact that our heart Lama, our teacher, our personal guide is Buddha, is a manifestation of this love, this compassion, wisdom.

We see ourselves making offerings and asking for blessings. It's a review, it's a complete review of the different kinds of offerings that are powerful to make, because by making offerings, we're planting seeds to receive offerings—that's a long story why we want to do that. And then asking for blessings tells us what we want to grow in ourselves. By asking for blessings from the Lama to be able to do that, we actually are able to grow those realizations. So it's a beautiful, complete practice. 

I told you before that it was held deeply secret. For our training, it was to learn it, Geshe Michael gave a commentary on that prayer, course 18 out of 18. Our final training was Lama Chupa prayer. But like a year and a half, two years before that, Geshe Lothar came to Diamond Mountain and gave us what's called a blessing to practice at Jainam. He gave us an oral transmission of the text in Tibetan in order to give us this connection between the text and the lineage, the lineage going all the way back to Lord Buddha, of course.

So Geshe Lothar is Holy Khen Rinpoche's nephew, as you recall. He recently passed. His devotion to Khen Rinpoche was extraordinary.

He told the story of Rinpoche's escape from Tibet. He told it to us at Diamond Mountain during one of our early Diamond Way courses. It's an extraordinary story, which Khen Rinpoche himself never told. But Geshe Lothar was with him for that escape. He was the attendant.

Apparently on the night that it was all coming down, they had already gotten out of the monastery and they were grouped trying to figure out what to do. Do we fight? Do we run? If we run, where do we go? 

And Rinpoche realized that there was something that had been left behind that was absolutely necessary. And Rinpoche said, I have to go back to the monastery. I've got to get this thing. And Geshe Lothar said, no, right? I'll go. 

His devotion to his Lama was such that he was willing to put himself in that tremendous danger for whatever this thing was that they needed.

His Lama devotion was extraordinary, is the point.

So he came to Diamond Mountain. He gave us this blessing to practice Lama Chupa, and they did it up in the retreat valley. So Diamond Mountain has where the temple is and the homes are. Then you go up through this canyon and the ranch house is up there. That's where all the retreat cabins have been built.

But at the time that he came to give this practice blessing to us, the cabins had not been built yet. The locations of them had not even yet been quite established.

He was up there and he found an area that was flat enough and accessible enough that he said, this is where I wanna give the Jainam.

So they set up this beautiful altar, it's outdoors, and everybody gathered there late one night and he read us the Lama Chupa in Tibetan on this space up in what became the retreat valley.

I don't know, somebody left that session early, in a hurry and they're driving too fast on that road to Bowie, and they hit a big black steer on the road and nearly killed themselves. And somebody else, like all kinds of fallout, right? Harsh fallout happened for people after that blessing to practice. It's like one of those lessons about, you do a powerful virtue and it stirs up your yuck and something awful happens, and then it happens and it finishes and it's done. You come out of it a better person. It happened to several people after that Jainam, just trying to convey the power of this prayer.

Then curiously, that site upon which the Jainam was given was the site that Sumati and I were given for our retreat cabin. So our retreat cabin is planted on that space that that Jainam was given. I don't know the significance of that, but I'm just sharing. I think it's called cabin 19. It is not one of the high rent cabins. It's very plain. It's very simple, but it packs a punch. Advertisement.

In this Lama Chupa prayer, there are a series of verses and we're going to study them. I'm not going to take a whole lot more time. We won't do it all of it, but let's look at it. 

At this point in the Lama Chupa prayer, we're about halfway or two thirds of the way through the whole thing. The first half is about making offerings and confessing. And then we start this section that says, now that I've made offerings to you, my holy Lama, please bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me.

I'm just going to read it for the sake of time, and then next class, we'll go into it a little bit deeper.

Verses

[78] So thus have I made offerings 

To my holy Lama,

And in devotion made to you

My supplication too—

Planted these within the highest

Garden that there is,

Highest of all gardens.

You and You alone, my Savior,

Are the very root of every

Happiness and good for me;

Through the power of the deeds then

That I've done here may You grant

With joy the blessing that You keep me

With you ever after.

[79] This is the one and only time

That I will ever find

Spiritual leisure and fortune

Such as this.

Bless me to see

How difficult it was to obtain,

And how quickly it is destroyed;

Bless me to avoid becoming distracted

By the meaningless business of this life—

Bless me to take the essence of life,

Bless me to give it some meaning.

Are you recognizing the Lam Rim?

[80] Bless me to take heartfelt refuge

In the Three, both rare and supreme

For the fear I feel for the fire

Of the pain of the lower realms.

Bless me to throw myself

Into giving up every negative deed,

And accomplishing every good.

[81] Tossed on the mountainous waves

Of my karma and harmful emotions,

Ripped by the razor teeth

Of the sharks of the three sufferings,

I beg Your blessing please

To come to a fierce desire

To escape from this ocean of pain,

This infinite sea of fear.

What do you think's coming next? The wish for Bodhichitta.

[82] Bless me to relinquish the vision 

Of the unbearable prison of this cycle 

As a garden of earthly delights; 

Bless me to find the treasure 

Of the jewels of the realized, 

All three of the higher trainings; 

Bless me to take up the banner 

Of highest victory, 

The victory of freedom.

We get the commentary on all these some day.

[83] Bless me to contemplate 

How each of these tortured beings 

Has been my very own mother, 

And paid me every form of kindness, 

Over and over again. 

Bless me to develop sincere 

Compassion for each of them—

A love like that of a mother 

For a cherished child in pain. 

Right? Here is our Bodhichitta growing.

[84] Bless me to develop joy

In the happiness of others, 

Recognizing that both myself 

And others are in no way different: 

None of us wants even the slightest 

Form of suffering— 

None of us ever feels as if 

We have enough happiness.

[85] Bless me to see that this chronic disease 

Of taking care of myself

Is a road to all the misery 

This very act seeks to avoid. 

Bless me to put the blame

Where it really lies, 

And reach a bitter hatred 

For it; bless me 

To destroy the mighty 

Devil of my tendency 

To watch out only for myself.

[86] Bless me to see that cherishing 

All these Mother beings 

And the wish to see them all 

Reach every form of happiness 

Is the door that leads to

Infinite numbers

Of perfect personal qualities. 

Bless me then to love them all 

More than my own life, 

Even if every one of them 

Should suddenly think me their enemy.

[87] Bless me then to reach the ability 

To see myself and others equal, 

And to exchange them for myself 

In a state of mind, to sum it all up, 

Where I finally grasp the difference: 

The problems that come from acting

As infants do, thinking only of themselves; 

And the good that comes from acting 

As the Lords of the Able do, 

Thinking only of what others need.

[88] Cherishing myself

Is the door to every 

Trouble that there is; 

Cherishing my Mothers

Is the foundation 

Of every quality I could have; 

Bless me then that this deep practice 

Of exchanging others for myself 

Might become the very heart 

Of my daily practice [originally ‘path’].

[89] And so bless me my Holy Lama, 

Bless me, Lama of Compassion, 

That every living being there is 

May find every kind of happiness: 

Let all the evil deeds and obstacles, 

Let all the pain that ever comes 

To every living being, 

Every one of them my Mother, 

Come and ripen upon myself, 

Ripen upon me now, 

And let any goodness I ever do,

And all my happiness, 

Be sent away to others.

[90] This world and every being 

Who lives upon this world 

Are filled with the results 

Of every wrong ever done— 

Let a shower of suffering fall, 

Of things I never wanted. 

Bless me to see it all as a way 

That all the fruits of my own bad deeds 

Might finally be exhausted— 

Bless me to learn to turn every problem 

That ever comes to me 

Into a path that takes me further.

[92] In brief, bless me that I learn to change 

Everything that appears to me, 

Whether it be good or bad, 

Into a path for increasing 

The two forms of the Wish 

For enlightenment, 

Through practicing the five powers, 

Essence of all the Dharma there is, 

And experience then only joy.

I'm gonna stop there.

This verse,

[89] And so bless me my Holy Lama, 

Bless me, Lama of Compassion, 

That every living being there is 

May find every kind of happiness:

…

It's the verse that is the instruction for Tonglen. There's another verse later that says, and may I trigger this state of heart to ride on my breath. We'll get to it later.

The tradition recommends that we memorize this verse and then use it as a mantra. It's a really long mantra. But in the sense of using it to help our Tonglen practice session, remind us of where we are in the Lam Rim and what we're trying to do.

It‘s a little scary, isn't it? It's like all the evil deeds and obstacles and pain of every being come and ripen on me. It's like, I can hardly tolerate my own pain, let alone all of them.

That's why we're learning about Tonglen and how it works and how it does not work. We cannot take the pain and evil deeds from anybody.

We cannot take anyone's karma. We'll talk about it more.

You cannot get cancer from doing Tonglen on somebody's cancer. You cannot.

Any unpleasant thing that happens, happens because of the goodness that we're doing in Tonglen, stirs up some negative seeds that we have, causes an unpleasant thing to happen. That if it had been left in there for longer, would have been way worse than what it is ripening now.

That's true for any ripening technically. When we have an unpleasant thing happen, if those seeds had not ripened yesterday, and they waited to ripen a month from now, the headache that I had yesterday—I didn't have one, but for example, if it waits until a month from now, maybe wouldn't be a headache, maybe it would be a car accident where I wreck my neck. The seeds grow. They are growing constantly.

So in that sense, all those unpleasantness is that we have that we're like, argh (making noises of complaint), it’s like ok, because they're little ones I can tolerate. Burning them off with everyone. I forget, I have chronic pain. I have chronic fatigue. Everything's an effort. And when I'm in the space of great, burn it off, burn it off, burn it off, life's so much easier than when my mind's in the space of, how much longer? 

It's like me, me. Me gets in the way. It happens to all of us, I think.

We'll come back to our Lama Chupa. 

Meditation: Tonglen-ing Another Person

(84:44) Let's do our session. So in this meditation, we are going to use another person's distress. The person I would like you to choose is someone who you're very fond of, someone you love already. So maybe it's the person you think of at the beginning of class. But maybe as you're thinking about it now, you wanna choose somebody else, that's up to you.

I'll give us a little bit of time to think about somebody that you already care a lot about. So it'll be easy to look into their being and see their distress and to want to take it from them.

Then, when you have that person in mind, think through what distress am I seeing in them? There'll be a surface level distress. Then, underneath that, like if you put yourself in their shoes, what emotional distress is underneath the surface distress? 

Like if I use Sumati, and he's got this physical body that won't do what he wants it to do, whereas in his whole lifetime, he had the kind of physical body that was capable of doing anything he wanted it to do. And now it's like his body is betraying him. 

Underneath there, if I were him, it's like, I'd be disappointed. I would be impatient. I would be resentful, right? I don't know if that's what he's feeling. So I do my best to imagine what the things that I see them having, what maybe they're feeling underneath. And I include that in what I'd like to take from them. Because we can have outer circumstances that are unpleasant, but if our inner circumstances are sweet, sweet, the outer circumstances are useful or tolerable, or at least less suffering, right? We can have pain, but we don't have to suffer from it.

So it may be that our Tonglen practice, we can connect to it better rather than thinking, oh, my Tonglen practice is only successful when his Parkinson's disease gets better. Maybe I can be thinking, no, my Tonglen practice is being successful because his heart is opening, right? He's actually getting happier, even though his body still is being weird. It can still be me seeing my Tonglen practice being effective, do you see?

So when we're setting it up, try to be as specific as you can about the distress that you see in them, the distress that you probably feel they're feeling. And then of course we understand there are seeds for more of it are in them, and our seeds for more of it are in us.

Then you see all of that distress as that black goo flowing through their body.

We'll do the power of our concentration propelled by our love. Like, I want you to be free of this. Makes all that black stuff gather into the tight little ball, remember? 

Then we shift to our breath, poking it, cranking it back, right?

I'll talk us through all of that.

Let me give you a few moments to pick your person and think of their distress, and then we'll settle in and we'll start.

(89:39) Okay, have you got your person?

Have you got their distress? Pretty much anyway.

So then settle your body, the sinking down to your sits bones, solid and firm.

Raise that inner energy up. Scan down your outer body, inviting all those areas to relax, head, face, neck, shoulders, in a nice wave.

And turning your mind back up, bringing your focused attention to your breath at your nostrils, the sensation.

Watching that out breath, watching the in breath, using that object to turn on your focus, brighten your clarity and turn on the intensity, the fascination.

Intentionally shift your focus from your breath to that precious holy being before you. 

For this preliminaries, recall their qualities that you see in them, made of love, made of compassion, made of wisdom, knowing directly what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do.

Ask them to bless you with this meditation, learning this meditation to help you open your heart to your own Bodhichitta so that we can become like them.

And see as a result of your request, they reach out their left hand and touch you gently on the chest, granting you this blessing to learn this practice, this holy practice.

Then give them a nod and turn your focus of attention then to that person that you love, that you want to help.

Picture them wherever you believe they are right now.

And then imagine that you are there with them in invisible form.

That invisible you, you are aware of their current distress, the obvious aspects of it, the more subtle aspects of it.

And with your awareness of it, your feeling of compassion grows, your love for them grows. You recognize probably they have more seeds for more of this kind of suffering. I wish I could stop that for them too.

And decide in your own mind, I'm going to take it from them. I'm going to do Tonglen.

And so focus your attention on their distress.

Now you can see that black goo streaming around there, inside their body.

And by the power of your concentration, your wish to take it from them, you see those streams of black yuck turning and gathering, gathering all together in the middle of their chest.

Look inside them. Anywhere you find blackness, draw it to that ball into that gathering ball at their heart.

When it's all gathered, identify it again, decide again, I'm going to take this all from them. I'm happy to do so.

And use your exhales to send forth, little bit at a time, this hook that goes towards them with each exhale. It finally reaches close enough that their inhales draw it in, your exhales send it.

It goes in, down their throat, down their chest, hooking into that black ball of goo. 

When you see it hooked, shift your attention to your inhales and pull that black ball up their chest, up their throat, out their nostrils, drawing it towards yourself.

Bright, eager, happy to do so, bringing that black ball of goo to hover just underneath your own nostrils.

Recall what it is, what their distress was, what the underlying emotion and the seeds for anything more like that and leave it there.

Look inside your own chest and see that tiny little flame, the flame of my own selfishness because of the belief in a self-existent me, my own ignorance burning there. Make this connection. When this black ball of goo touches this flame, the two are going to destroy each other.

In your own time, set yourself up with the long exhale so that on your inhale, you pull that ball of goo in, down, touch the flame, bright light, goes out, wisp of smoke, disappears. So prepare yourself, and then in your own time, you go.

Then go back to breathing normally once the wisp has disappeared and rest in that absence.

Then stir your mind forth to look again at that other person and see them now feeling such relief from whatever was going on before.

They feel happy, strong, confident, whatever the situation, they know how to handle it, even eager to do so.

They feel more loving.

Feel how good it feels to have helped them in this way.

Know that in doing this imaginary practice, our own selfishness is being burnt away. 

Enjoy that.

Now dedicate what we've done to helping your own heart open up in this way, to be able to feel this loving feeling even as we go through our days.

Then bring that invisible you there with them and come back to this-you in your room, in this class. When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

That's not so hard, is it? Yeah, sweet.

Anyone have any comments, questions, things to share with others about doing this practice?

(Student: Yes, thank you so much for this beautiful teaching and the beautiful Tonglen. I want to share something. I'm very, very grateful for this gathering today because I have a very, very good friend and she has two kinds of cancers. And today she has her first chemo. And I'm so thankful that I was able to do this with all of you. Thank you so much. Made it very powerful.)

Yay. What's her name? May I put her on my healing list?

(Student: It's Daniela. She's even younger than me. She's like in her thirties.)

And her last name?

(Student: Oh, actually at the moment I don't know because we won't listen. I'm emotional, yeah. But thank you so much. And I will tell her too. Thank you so much.) Yeah. Like, may it be so. Thanks for sharing.

(Student: First of all, the practices we did so far for ourselves, I had really trouble picturing myself actually. It was difficult for me to see myself in front of me. And the taking also, it's easier for someone else. But what really struck me when I didn't do so far is really thinking of, and they may have seeds for more of that. So this makes a big difference to me and my practice to think of taking all that might be there still away. That was very beautiful, thank you.)

Good, yay. Yay. Anything else?

(Student: Yeah, my dilemma is the same as usual, I guess. But I can't visualize squat. I'm talking black. It's like the bulb is burned out in my projector. I can have irrational fears, like what if I get the black ball here and then I don't have, I mean that. But I was wondering, what about, I've been, you know, there's other people that are like teaching this to sort of people with lower, I can't remember the word, lower aspirations, lower capacity. It's like breathe in the bad and breathe out the good, which just seems really, you know, kind of too vague. Yeah. And so the prayer seems to me, that you read today, seems to be the solution for that maybe. And I was wondering, can you combine this with like a fire puja so that that's the black ball and that's the flame and have it be… I mean, that seems like it might work for me, but I don't know, is that…? Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Like sort of like maybe do the best you can and then at the end do like a fire puja so you're going, here's the black ball and…)

Seeing it burnt up. Yeah. Yeah, the only thing with the fire puja is you can't get the fire to go out when it burns up the thing. But yeah, I know as a tangible way of Tonglen-ing to modify your fire puja, explore that please and see what you come up with.

(Student: Turn off the gas.)

There you go, okay. Turn off the gas, it's gone. Get it tangible. Yeah, feel free to mess with that. You know, the thing is with non-visualizers, it is frustrating because this whole tradition is built on visualization. And it is, it's like, it's just blank. But know that what you're thinking is happening behind that veil, in really detailed way. So we have to think it in words, but the thing is you can know what you're thinking is happening. You don't have to see it. And I think that's a whole nother level of practice that some of us get to do that's gonna have ramifications for later that makes these visualized practices just as powerful. My Lamas have said, maybe more so because you do them without actually seeing them happening and you know that it's happening, okay? So don't sell yourself short that your Tonglen is not working because you can't actually visualize. I am gathering all that goo into that tight black ball. I am hooking it with my breath. I'm leaving it there, establishing my flame. And then I'm bringing the two together. You do it in mental words with a deep sense of knowing it's happening and it works. Yeah, good. Thanks for bringing that up. It is tricky.

(Student: The other thing is tricky is that there's like a corruption of this practice, I would think that is anybody who's wishing ill. And so my teachings up to this point have been, don't do any mental healing because it's like you're becoming indebted to those spirits. And then it's like taking out a loan where you don't know it's a 30% interest and oh, it will be really bad for…, karmically and stuff. And so I can see where, you know, and the sort of solution was to not do anything in your own name, to do it in the name of your teacher or your Lama and be submissive to that so that you're not making your ego worse and stuff. But at first I was really worried about that but the more I listened, the more I think I can navigate that. But it's sort of like, it's an issue to make sure that you don't say teach to somebody else that would lead them to be doing something that is actually bad seed planting instead the good seed planting.)

Right, that's a good point. Very good point. Anything else?

All right, then let's dedicate.

[Dedication]

Okay, welcome back. We are Tonglen Practice Group. I think this is our class four, is that right? It is November 17th, 2025. We'll do our usual opening prayers and then go into the Tonglen meditation and then we'll have the class part after this time. So let's again use a person that we are very fond of, right? Someone we love so that it's easy to feel this wish to take away their distress. Okay, so first let's do our opening prayers in the usual way. 

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Meditation: Tonglen-ing Another Person (only Taking/LEN)

Preliminaries

(9:15) So settle your body into meditation posture.

Get your sits bones solid, pushing down in the chair. Feel that inner energy rising, raising your sternum, raising your crown.

Turn and scan down your outer body, inviting everything to relax. Scalp and face, neck, shoulders, arms, upper torso, lower torso, hips, thighs, calves, feet, and turn your mind and come back up.

Coming to rest with your focus at your nostrils, watching the sensation of the air go out and come back in. Using that breath as your object to focus.

Turn on your clarity and turn on intensity.

Now intentionally shift your object of focus from breath to that precious holy being. 

Think of what they have taught you about the marriage of karma and emptiness and how making our behavior choices based upon that to the best of our ability is our protection, our refuge.

Grow your wish that every existing being could know that secret as well.

Recognize that this precious holy being is here for us to help us learn to live according to that wisdom.

We know that they do so and had to learn to do so in order to become this wise, exquisite, loving, compassionate being who knows what we need.

Think of just one of their good qualities that you admire and aspire to grow within yourself. Tell them about it.

Make a mental prostration.

Feel your gratitude to them.

And so we want to make them an offering. And we use this offering also to request of them to grant us more insight, more teaching.

See how happy they are with you, and we feel so safe with them that we want to clear our heart of some negativity. Think of some thought or word or deed that's happened recently, that when it grows and ripens will be unpleasant.

Tell them about it.

Reassert your refuge understanding.

Feel your regret.

Give yourself an antidote power and a power of restraint.

We'll sit two minutes to give us time.

Now fill that space with rejoicing.

Think of some kindness you saw someone do recently. Tell them about that.

Tell them of another kindness you did.

Tell them something good about somebody you don't particularly care for.

And again, see how happy that being is with you.

Ask them to please, please stay close to you.

Ask them to help you see them helping you even in the form of other beings, beings that don't look like them.

Ask them to continue to bring you teachings so that we can continue to help others. 

And then dedicate just what we've done so far to gaining deeper insight into your Tonglen practice, opening your heart to Bodhichitta, both kinds.

And you can turn your mind back to your body to see if it needs to shift or wiggle. 

Tonglen

(24:10) Then you settle it back in.

Bring your attention to your breath again to set that focus, clarity, intensity.

We'll begin our Tonglen, actually just still doing LEN part.

So now think of the person that you really care for, who's having some kind of problem.

Think of where they probably are right now. And imagine that you are there with them in an invisible form.

Get a sense of the space they are in.

Then focus in on them clearly. You are aware of the problem that they are having. 

You know something about it.

Identify the surface problem and try to look a little deeper. What might be the mental afflictions underneath? What might be the reactions they are feeling compelled to do? 

We can't know exactly, of course.

But our own past experiences can help us understand.

Recognize also that for them to be experiencing this particular incidence of this distress, they probably have more seeds for more of it.

And so feel your wish that they be free of this distress, free of the seeds for more of it, free of the misunderstanding that underlies it all.

And make your determination to do this Tonglen LEN practice to try to help them.

And so with this strong motivation, as you focus on their distress and feel your compassion, your concentration makes all of that distress gather into the middle of their heart.

See it like black, gooey, yucky stuff all around inside their body. Because of your concentration, it turns and migrates towards the center of their chest, all of it coming together into a little black ball.

When you have it gathered, again, identify that little black ball of goo, the distress of the situation, the mental afflictions, the feelings underneath it, the kind of worldly action that they're probably going to propel, and all the seeds for more of all of that. 

Then decide, I'm going to take this from them.

And with that, you turn your attention to your outbreath, sending it forth slowly.

Each breath, it goes a little further towards them…

…until it gets close enough that their inhale helps draw it in.

Your exhale sending it, goes in their nostrils, down into their chest, hooking into that little black ball of their distress.

When you have it nicely hooked, say again, great, now I can take it from them.

Shift your focus to your inhales. And each inhale draws that black ball of goo up their chest, up through their throat, out their nose, slowly, slowly drawing it towards yourself, bringing it to rest, hovering beneath your nostrils.

Identify it again.

And then recall, if I can see this happening in my world, I have seeds for it.

And so leave that ball hovering and look into our own chest where we see that tiny little flame of our own misunderstanding ourselves and our world, and the selfishness that arises from it.

Recognize this tiny little flame of our ignorance and selfishness is in fact, underneath all the suffering that we can experience, all the suffering that we can see.

And so we take that personal responsibility to use our loved one’s pain to destroy our own selfishness and misunderstanding.

So just listen first, I'll review to set up.

You take a nice, long, slow, easy exhale. And on the inhale, you draw that black ball in your own nostrils, down your throat, slow motion down your chest, so that you can watch, and see the very moment that the edge of the black ball touches the tip of the flame.

And when they do, they instantly flash into a brilliant light, blink out, a wisp of smoke that disappears, and you have that absence.

You go back to breathing normally, as you rest in that absence.

So now go back to knowing the black ball and what it is.

And when you're ready, start your sequence.

Rest in that absence, that freedom as best you can.

When your mind stirs and let yourself become aware of that other person, your loved ones, and see how relieved they are.

They feel happy, they feel confident.

They know they can deal with this circumstance in a different way, if the circumstance is even still happening.

It feels so good to see them feel good.

Then decide to leave your person, bring your invisible you back to this you in your room.

Feel that it feels nice to have tried to help them in that way.

And think to yourself, if it's true that my whole world is driven by the seeds of my own mind, then may the seeds I have just planted bring about the result of the end of that other's pain forever someday.

And know that it will come about.

And so become more keenly aware of yourself in your room. And when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

How To Do Tonglen Practice So It Can work

(43:43) It takes longer for me to describe this practice than it does for you to do it, right? But the few pieces that when you're doing it yourself, that you don't want to miss, is the clear identification of the distress the person's having, that we're perceiving they're having. And then looking under that to identify the emotions they're probably feeling from it, that are coloring their reaction to the whole situation.

You want to clearly identify all of that.

Of course we don't know. The better we know our person, the more closely our idea will match, perhaps. But we can Tonglen people, beings, we don't have any clue what they feel like, just based on our own personal experience, our own anticipation.

If I were in that boat, how would I feel?

Tonglen still works, even if we don't exactly get it right from their side. I was Tonglen-ing your fear. And then, I mean, not that you're ever going to talk to them about it necessarily, but if you did, and you might say, well, I was Tonglen-ing your fear. And they said, well, really, I was just angry. It's not like our Tonglen failed because we didn't get the exact match.

For me, I get it identified, and then by the time I've got it pulled out and over here, it's all gotten kind of vague. So I like to stop and re-identify once it's here.

Then the second piece not to forget is, when we look at the flame inside our heart, really clearly identify that. That flame represents my ignorance.

But ignorance is such a big word. Make sure we understand what we mean by my ignorance. Like my belief that there's a me and there's an outer world that comes at me, and that I believe the outer world has its qualities in it.

We want to really identify. Don't stop and think it all through. But maybe ignorance isn't the word that triggers it for you. Find some word that you know when you use it, what you mean is this underlying mistake that I make in every moment of my experience.

I use the word ‚mistake‘, this big mistake. Out of that misunderstanding of me comes me first. Must protect me. And from that colors everything I decide to do to make me happy and avoid me suffering.

We will not ever get rid of our me. What we are getting rid of is our misunderstanding of the nature of me. From a me that everything's happening to, to simply the me side of everything that's happening.

There will always be a subject side, your subject side, my subject side. We're not wishing to destroy that. We can't.

What we're wanting to destroy is the misunderstanding that the me is something in and of itself, independent of being part of every seed ripening.

When we understand that every seed ever planted, every seed that ever will be planted will always have a subject, an object and an interaction between—those three spheres—we can't ever destroy our subject side.

But when our subject side believes it's a me that exists independent of that process, that me begets selfishness, and selfishness begets unkindness to get what we want and avoid what we don't want.

In our misunderstanding of me, we misunderstand everybody else, and we experience them as experiencing themselves in the same way, having their own me that needs to protect itself and get happiness and avoid suffering. There lies all the conflict.

That little flame, we want to identify it as well and recognize that because of this flame of self-existent me and my selfishness. I'm actually the one who's making me see them distressed in that way.

Yes, they have their own seeds and my seeds make me see them with those seeds. 

So I can help them by destroying my seeds that cause me to see them in pain.

When we Tonglen, the Tonglen's not doing anything. What we're doing is the seeds we're planting by Tonglen-ing is changing our own heart that will change what we see in them. That's how it works.

That's how anything works—by way of our own seeds.

The difficulty is that delay. As with any seed, you don't plant a seed and get the result at the same time, and you don't plant a seed and get a result in the very next moment. It takes time.

How much time? It depends on so many factors.

Can I do my Tonglen in a way that increases the power of it so that it can ripen faster? Yes, we'll talk about it.

But does it mean that our Tonglen did not work if the person we are Tonglen-ing, I don't know, we're trying to Tonglen their high blood pressure, and maybe their high blood pressure in fact does go down. But then they get killed in a car crash.

Did our Tonglen work or not work?

If we Tonglen them for their anger, and they just still keep meeting angry people, did our Tonglen not work?

How can we ever judge it if we don't know how long it'll take for the seeds to ripen? 

When we are doing our Tonglen, we're not doing it so much to get the results. 

I'm listening to myself and it's like, wait, no, but I am doing it for the result. But if we judge our practice by way of the result, we will find ourselves lacking and then we'll find the practice lacking, and then we'll drop away from it.

It's true, not just with Tonglen, all of the practices that we learn. 

Geshehla teaches the four steps, clearly identify what you want, find somebody who wants the same thing, meet with them, rejoice, and you can get your seeds to shift in two weeks. He teaches that and then he teaches it to somebody else and somebody else. Then we come along and we pick up somebody who's learned that three years ago and they say, I'm doing my four steps and it hasn't worked yet.

It‘s like, no, no, no, it hasn't not worked. It's that it just hasn't given you the results yet, or the results you are expecting means you're not able to see the results that you're getting, right? You decide, I want a tall blonde boy. And the one that shows up in your life is short with black hair, and you're falling in love with him, but you don't let yourself do it because he's supposed to be blonde. Right?

We're taking our expectation and it's blocking our ability to see our result.

So if we are result oriented in our Tonglen, we're limiting ourselves, that rather we use Tonglen to plant our seeds differently and then just let them do what seeds do. Which is be influenced by all the other seeds, influenced by the sunshine and the water, and then when they sprout, it's like, oh, look, oh, look. Maybe it's not until we've completely forgotten that we even made those seeds.

I don't know about you, but I know my tendency through life has always been result oriented. I want to make this happen. I want to make that happen. And repeated theme in my life was like, I could get this result and this result and this result, but I was really going for that one, and that one I would always not quite get. It left me disappointed or feeling betrayed.

Can we shift our focus to the pleasure of the planting based on the four steps, based on what we want to see in our world, plant it and go on, plant it and go on. Tonglen practice is a beautiful way to do that. We're planting it, moving on.

(Student: It's the result orientation and something like attachment? So you are attached to something when you are result oriented, right?)

Right, right. So the attachment itself is not the taint. It's the ignorant attachment, believing that that thing we are attached to will be the source of my happiness.

When we know it's not the source of my happiness, but rather it's a source of a tool that I can use help somebody, then be attached to it in the sense of, I'm going to keep it and protect it because I use it for somebody else. That's not ignorant attachment.

Yeah, good.

(58:15) In the West, they have that legend, somebody called Johnny Appleseed.

He was in the Appalachians and he had a bag full of apple seeds and he would go into an area and he would just plant these apple seeds and in a valley and he'd go away. He wouldn't stay to tend them and watch them grow. He'd just plant the seed and walk away.

He did that like his whole lifetime. Some of those seeds grew and they grew into apple trees and they made apples. And out there, in the wilds of the Appalachian valleys, there are wild apple trees, which usually are cultivated, and they're available for people to pick. So it's kind of, I like that imagery.

It's like in my Buddhist practice, my spiritual practice, I want to be Johnny Appleseed instead of result-driven. It just feels so much nicer.

Tonglen is this beautiful, sweet practice that we can be planting seeds in our own minds for people's freedom from distress. And in the process of doing that, we are destroying the seeds in our own heart, our own mind that make us see that distress in other people.

So why not just think about my own seeds and just do four powers, four powers, four powers?

Why go out and be amongst other people at all?

It's like, how do we know that we have mental afflictions?

When we're out amongst other people, right? When we're all by ourselves, we still know we have mental afflictions when we're all by ourselves after three years of all by myself. We still know. But it's easy to get in the space where they've slowed down, and you even might imagine, oh my gosh, I'm getting free of that one. And then you go out and you be amongst people and, oh, I guess I'm not free of that one after all, because there it comes up.

So other beings, whether they're human people or other kinds of people, our interaction with them is the arena within which we plant our seeds. We need them. We want them.

I'm looking at the chat. It went by. Yeah. So Chrys said, is that what's meant by selfless service where you're not attached to the result of your good planning?

I think that's brilliant. Yes. Yeah. We're doing the best that we can, for the highest and the best of all concerned, which includes our me. We're allowed to have good results. 

We will get good results. We won't be able to help getting good results. It'll be, wow, great, and then we'll share, we'll offer those good results.

We also get to the place where when we're still getting bad results, unpleasant experiences, our awareness can be such, it's like, oh, just burning it off. Opportunity to act differently than my flame of ignorance wants to make me act. In which case those unpleasant experiences, although they are still unpleasant, we don't actually perceive them as things to resist or things to dislike, right?

We don't actually have to suffer from unpleasant circumstances.

There's that saying, pain is inevitable in life, but suffering is optional.

Probably we've all had the experience of, I was injured one time. I broke my clavicle and I had just learned this method of tapping for emergencies. So I was tapping and that clavicle did not hurt. My shoulder wouldn't work. I knew there was something seriously wrong. I didn't know what it was yet, but I was in the emergency room, like the whole time between the accident and the getting to the emergency room, it was probably two hours, I'm tapping, waiting for this thing to swell up and start to really hurt. It just didn't.

I'm doing the intake in the ER, right? I'm doing this and I'm telling my story. And the nurse finally says, why are you tapping on your chest? I said, well, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? I have no pain.

She just looked at me like (Really?).

But really I went through that whole broken clavicle with almost no pain—until it healed it and then I had to move my shoulder and then ouch.

But the point is, we can have something awful happen, and our attitude can be all right. I'll use this to…

Pleasant things, I use them to offer, to share and offer.

Unpleasant things, I use them to suck them out of the world.

May my migraine be the last migraine in anybody, everywhere, anywhere.

It's like, come on, that's not possible.

But it is possible, isn't it? Maybe mine will be the last one for everybody, because my seeds shift and then migraines disappear in the human world. There have been diseases that disappeared. Can't think of one right now, but there have been. You just don't see them anymore. And we say, yeah, yeah, because they treated it in the last person. No, because our seeds changed.

Exploring the Verses

(72:31) Last class, we received the oral transmission of that series of verses from the Lama Chupa prayer, offering to the Lamas. It's in your reading. So that you had it. Okay.

Those verses are a brief, well, what they're alluding to are a combination of the seven step cause and effect method for growing our Bodhichitta, and the exchanging self and others. When he wraps it all up, he suggests that we use Tonglen practice as the tool for acting from this new level of awareness that we're trying to grow.

So it's in the section of asking for the blessings to reach our realizations of the Lam Rim, moving ourselves towards our path to freedom and beyond. It's in this section of shifting from our wish to achieve Nirvana, freedom for ourselves alone, and recognizing that, well, if I can do that for me, everybody can do it. Shifting our renunciation onto others.

So the first step in that seven step cause and effect method, as we've learned or will learn, is to grow a sense of equanimity, meaning that we care for every existing being in the same way. Not, I want this one to get happy, but I don't care about that one. 

It's a long story, not for now.

The next step in seven step cause and effect is to then decide, I'm going to recognize that every being that I interact with, that I can perceive, is a being who in the past was my mother. They are now someone who was my mother in the past.

So this person now, when we were in that relationship as my mother they did me a great, great goodness. They gave me a lifetime, whether it was a lifetime as a cockroach or a prince of the world. Mothers are powerful karmic objects because they give us life. And for human mothers and some animal mothers, they also hang around to help us survive at great sacrifice.

The idea of recognizing this being is my mother from before. The idea is that, oh, when she was my mother, I loved her very much and she helped me very much. And so I want to repay her for her kindness, even if now in this life, it's like she's gone crazy and she's really mean to me.

It's like, no, no. We're just trying to grow an ability to interact with other beings on this level of wanting to take care of them, because we want to repay them.

But deeper down, I had said earlier, might there be ways that we could make our Tonglen seed planting more powerful so the seeds can ripen faster, so that the other person can benefit, so I can see the other person benefit? Although hot on the heels of that, I said, don't worry about the result.

So you can hold me to that. But there are tricks of the trade to plant our seeds in such a way that they will ripen sooner—and we want that. Not so much for us, but for the others in our world.

Wouldn't we like to be able to plant the seeds for the end of war so powerfully that they could ripen within my lifetime, all war would cease? Yeah, that'd be great.

One of the ways to increase the power of our seed planting is to plant our seeds in relation to someone who is a powerful karmic object. So to see all beings as my mother is a sneaky method for us to see the being we are interacting with as a powerful karmic object. Those who are in Diamond Way see where that goes. So double peace is not just, oh, I want to repay her because this being who's suffering was my mother before, and it's the same mindstream, I want to repay her now. And I'm going to repay her by Tonglen-ing. I'm going to repay her by bringing her flowers too. But really, the way I really repay all my mothers is to stop their suffering.

But wait, if I can't take their karma, how can I stop their suffering?

But wait, the suffering I see in them isn't their karma, it's my karma.

The suffering they see in them, I don't even know, do I?

Does it mean they don't have it?

No. I don't know.

So if I see suffering in them, I want to try to help them. And everything I try worldly wise, actually falls short. Maybe I do help the person's blood pressure goes down, but then they get in a car accident. What we do worldly ways can't work.

But wait, Tonglen doesn't work either, because we can't lower somebody's blood pressure by sucking imaginary black goo out of them.

But the seeds that we plant, by wanting to take their blood pressure problem away, does sooner or later, stop their suffering. It may not ever lower their blood pressure, but we will see them not suffering from it. It's a little tricky.

Tonglen works by way of the seeds it plants, because of our willingness to take the pain. So wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

(81:14) In this series of verses, he says,

Recognize all beings as my mother

Recognize how kind they were

And so grow my compassion for them,

And my love for them.

Like the love of a mother for a child in pain.

We're thinking of them as my mother from before, and we're thinking of them as my child now. And my child them is suffering so terribly from situations that do seem awful. But underneath, really, it's going to be okay.

Like the little kid falls off the bike, scrapes their knee. They think it's the end of the world. You clean it up, you kiss the boo boo, and they're going to be fine.

Parent knows, you're okay, you're going to be fine. It's all right. Your love, your compassion. You know, it's going to pass.

Same for any situation when we are in the karma emptiness understanding mode.

It doesn't lessen our compassion, lessen our love. It makes it stronger, actually.

Because we can be there for them. From the strength of being able to support them through it. Like knowing, knowing better what's happening with the seed.

He reminds us to develop joy and the happiness of others.

A Bodhisattva is in the happiness making business.

Our human tendency is when we see somebody get something that makes them happy, or would make us happy that we're not getting, we get jealous. Even when we go, wow, good for you. There's a part of us that's going, Why you not me?

So subtle, but it colors. Our own mind is always there, always aware of what's arising within it.

To genuinely take joy and the happiness of others, like parent, when their child succeeds. You, who are our parents, you know what that feels like. Your joy for them is genuine, because they are your child. As opposed to your colleague at work.

Well, what if you convinced yourself that this colleague at work, some lifetime they were my child. Can I relate to them in that same way now, and be really happy with their success? All these ways.

To plant seeds on with our children as karmic objects, it's just not as powerful a karmic seed. Of course, they are more powerful karmic seeds than a rabbit, but not as powerful as mother.

But then I just said, every being is your mother from before.

My mind has to toggle, are they parent or are they child? But technically, right, they're both, because everybody's been everything for everybody in infinite time. 

He goes on in that verse and says, look, nobody wants the slightest kind of suffering. None of us feel like we have enough happiness.

So come on, cut those other people some slack, cut yourself some slack.

What little happiness arises in our world, let's be happy for it.

With all the suffering that goes on in the world, let's be sad about it.

Let's have compassion, because it's all driven by that big mistake of thinking we have some kind of nature in us that the world is happening at.

As opposed to recognizing this subject side is the creator of its entire experience. So let's create something nice for everybody.

He goes on to say,

Lama bless me to destroy this chronic disease

Of taking care of myself.

That's what's this flame is, this chronic disease of belief in me as a separate thing than my projections, my experiences, and that me that needs to get what it wants and avoid what it doesn't want regardless of what I have to do to get it. 

Wisdom you is still going to act in ways to bring pleasure to oneself and avoid displeasure. But wisdom you will not be willing to harm somebody else or to harm oneself in order to get the pleasure or avoid the displeasure.

It's what we do in response to our experience that reveals our wisdom or our ignorance.

That verse says,

Bless me to destroy the mighty devil

Of my tendency to watch out

Only for myself.

Only for myself, not to watch out for myself, because we have to. But only for myself is what our flame of misunderstanding me does. Even when we are exceptionally kind people, when we're still misunderstanding our true nature and others' true nature, we cannot act in a way that does not include some kind of self-protection or self gain that colors our choice of behavior.

Next, he points out that cherishing all our mother beings and wishing for their happiness is actually the door to all of our good qualities.

Any goodness you see in yourself, any goodness you see in your world is ripening results of kindnesses that we've done in the past. All of them.

Any distress that we see in our world is ripening results of ways in which we have caused that distress in others before.

He has this beautiful verse where the conclusion of it is, bless me to finally grasp the difference between how a two-year-old behaves in their world, and how a Buddha behaves in their world.

A two-year-old is supposed to be me, me, me—completely self-absorbed.

They're just learning how to be an independent self, aren't they?

They're learning how to separate from mom and be independent, and so every time mom says anything, they go, no.

It says, it's all about me as the little kid. I'm not saying derogatorily at all, but that's just what it is.

The verse says,

May I finally grasp the difference,

The problems that come from acting as infants do,

Thinking only of themselves,

And the good that comes from acting 

As the lords of the able do,

Thinking only of what others need.

So our Buddha perception of me won't be me in a world of others.

Our Buddha perception will be—this is me, not scripture—our Buddha perception will be we, like all, or us. Then that means that what is still perceived as other by Buddha, the happiness of that other is an extension of Buddha's subject side happiness. 

There's not my happiness, your happiness in you, your Buddha you.

There's like the happiness of my hand in the happiness of this hand in the happiness when you're identifying you as Buddha you.

This whole, this idea of exchanging self and others is really meaning expanding yourself to include others, is planting seeds for this new awareness of being able to have a self and an other, but not as these independent entities that are interacting, but rather as the ripening, ripening, happening, the happening, happening, happening.

All of you is happiness, sharing happiness, sharing happiness, sharing happiness—is where we're trying to go.

He next points out that

Cherishing ourselves

Is the door to every trouble there is.

Cherishing our mothers

Is the foundation of every quality we could have.

As we believe that the more I work on myself, the more I take care of myself, that more content and happy I will be, the less content and happy we will be in the future, because we're going about getting the happiness we want in the wrong way.

So it cannot work.

It may seem to work, but in the end, it cannot work because we are willing to be somehow unkind, unthoughtful to another to take care of our own self first.

Again, it does not mean that we stop taking care of ourselves. But what we do to take care of ourselves will not include any situation in which we will do an unkindness towards others to get what we want.

It's like, how could an unkindness ever bring us what we want? But it seems like it does. You tell the little white lie, and the other person rewards you for it.

But it wasn't the lie that got you the reward. It was some past generosity that got the reward, and telling the lie will result in some time in which someone doesn't believe you, whether you're telling the truth or not.

It's so hard to connect that dot when we can't see the actual result of the deed that we've done. We think we see it, because we think that the thing that happens next is the result of what we just did. Right? That's so hard to get off that automatic pilot.

I put my hand on the doorknob, I turn it, I pull, and the door opens. Of course, what I did in the moment happened, what came next. But technically not. So difficult.

He goes on in this verse to say,

Bless me then that this deep practice

Of exchanging others for myself

Might become the very heart

Of my daily path.

Caring for others with the same tenacity that I care for myself, meaning attend to my own needs.

When I have to go to the bathroom, I go to the bathroom.

When I'm thirsty, I drink something.

We attend to our own needs so effortlessly and our own needs color everything first, even in the most kind selfless people. We still are misunderstanding if that kind selfless person is still ordinary human. 

Love or Compassion—Which Comes First?

Finally we get to this verse that's called the Tonglen Mantra. It's long for a mantra. It's verse [89] that says,

And so bless me my Holy Lama, 

Bless me, Lama of Compassion, 

That every living being there is 

May find every kind of happiness: 

Let all the evil deeds and obstacles, 

Let all the pain that ever comes 

To every living being, 

Every one of them my Mother, 

Come and ripen upon myself, 

Ripen upon me now, 

And let any goodness I ever do,

And all my happiness, 

Be sent away to others.

When you hear that verse, honestly, what does your heart do? And what does your head do?

I admit, Tonglen is my favorite practice and I still hear this verse and there's a part of me that goes, (no!).

So when they first talk about this verse, they say, look, when we're learning to care about others, does love come first or does compassion come first?

If somebody's suffering, love is, I want your happiness. I want to give you happiness.

Compassion is, I want to take away your suffering.

At this level, love is, I want your happiness and I'm willing to do something to try to help you get it.

Compassion is, I want the end of your suffering and I'm willing to try to do something to help your suffering end.

What comes first?

If you try to give happiness to somebody who's in pain, how effective is our giving them happiness going to be? Not very, right?

If your child has that 104 fever, you don't go buy them a new toy. Here, honey, look, this'll help you feel better. They'll probably throw it at you.

You give them some medicine, right? You put them in a lukewarm tub, you bring their fever down, you help them feel better, and then you give them something that would help them be happy.

But don't we have to care enough about them to care that they're even suffering?

Isn't that love, to care enough to pay attention, to see that they're not as happy as we'd like them to be?

It seems like love does come first in our emotion.

But then in our action, compassion would come first before we act on our love.

So it is true that we're acting on our love when we are willing to pay close enough attention to someone to be aware of the pain that they're having. Because most of the time, we're trained to block it out, because it's too much.

The suffering that we see as you walk down the street is overwhelming if you let it all in. You would stop at the first homeless person and try to figure out just exactly why they're homeless, and where can I find you help? You'd never get to the grocery store, because then you finish with that person, and then there'd be the stray dog, and then there'd be, and then there'd be…, and then you look at the news. It would be overwhelming to go through our world with this open heart, wouldn't it?

Ordinary human nature says yes, overwhelm. But that's what we're trying to work with, is that limitation. And the beauty of Tonglen practice is even as we're zipping by all those situations in our car, we can decide I'm going to care enough to notice. And then I'm physically limited in what I can do for them, but I can always Tonglen.

How does it help them for me to Tonglen?

Does it help them for me to Tonglen?

(Student: If I become a Buddha, because of me Tonglen-ing, then I can help them.)

Exactly.

That seems like too far away, doesn't it?

Say no.

(student: It speeds up the process.)

It speeds up the process. Because how often do we have the opportunity to do that? 

Moment by moment by moment, even if we're all by ourselves, right?

Just look at the news and Tonglen.

It's such an exquisite practice.

But the root we get is when we say,

May all the evil deeds and obstacles,

All the pain that ever comes to anybody

May it ripen on me now.

All of it right now.

The commentaries soften it. They say, look, no matter how much you wish for somebody else's pain to come off of them and land on you, it is impossible.

We can't take someone's karma. They can't give us karma. Buddhas can't do it.

So why do we think that our wish for taking someone's pain can actually give me their pain? It can't.

It's supposed to reassure us so that when we say, may all the evil deeds land on me, we go, but I know it can't. So I say it.

But that waters down what we're trying to do, doesn't it?

I mean, it's useful if it helps us go ahead and say the words and try to suck it in.

But we want to understand a little deeper so that we're not staying at that surface level.

If we see someone with some kind of distress, and we have the extraordinary thought of, man, they're suffering, I wish I could take it from them.

Could we ever get a bad result from the karmic seed of that thought?

No, because it's such an extraordinary kindness thought.

Man, I wish I could take that suffering away. I'll pretend that I can, and I'll use it to destroy my misunderstanding that makes me see it in the first place. And I'll imagine that I could give them everything they could possibly want right up to their total enlightenment.

Can that series of thoughts ever bring you a bad result, an unpleasant result?

No, because it's such a good seed, a good series of seeds, 64 per instant.

If we're planting that many seeds with our Tonglen, we actually don't necessarily want our Tonglen to go by fast.

Like when we're driving past the homeless guy, that's all the time we've got.

But when we're doing it at home, at our own leisure, you take all that time to get the breath to go out and hook into their goo. Because every instant is 64 seeds planting of my wish that I'm going to take their pain from them by doing this.

Why not spend 20 minutes at it, because of all the seeds we're planting towards powerful karmic object, they're my mother, I'm doing it?

All these different ways that we are adding to the power of the seeds that we're planting. We're doing it in a stream over and over again towards high objects, highly motivated. It's all built in to this extraordinary practice.

So by saying the words, all the evil deeds and obstacles ripen upon me now, that is such a goodness that even if it happens, you won't suffer from it. 

If something we used to call a bad thing ripens on us, but now we use it for something good, we don't suffer from it. Is it a bad thing?

No. It's so extraordinary.

So stay at the level of, I'm going to wish to take all their pain, but I know their pain can't come on me because I can't take their karma—if that helps.

But try to go deeper.

The wish to take their bad deeds is such a greatness, that it's only going to result in goodness.

What will that goodness entail eventually? Seeing that other as a happy being, free of their suffering.

Might they still not have enough money? Yes, maybe.

But if they're free of their suffering from not enough money, isn't that what we really were wanting for them? Freedom from their suffering.

He goes on after a couple of verses, verse 93. He finally says,

Bless me to use the mystic machine 

Of giving and taking riding the breath

Love and compassion and the willingness

To free all beings myself 

To practice that one thought

The wish for enlightenment 

To free every living being

From this vast sea of suffering.

So when we are doing Tonglen, we are practicing our wish for enlightenment.

We are wanting to take that pain and suffering from the other.

We are wanting to destroy the ignorance that causes it.

And we are wanting to give them all kinds of happiness.

The mystic machine is referring to the Highest Yoga Tantra, highest practices called completion stage, where we are using the goodness we've created in our creation stage to work with our subtle body to transform our perception of our me and my world from ordinary to Buddha.

We can think of this because of the empty nature of our me and my body.

We can think of it as being made of these very subtle channels of vibration that are called channels, winds and drops of consciousness.

We are taught a particular remap of this to think of it in a different way in which it's made of these tubes of energetic vibrations, that when they twist around the central tube, make a constriction within it that prevents the winds flowing in that central tube. 

When the winds flow in the central tube, they are not flowing in the outside tubes. And when they flow in the outside tubes, that movement moves the mind in such a way that we are forced to perceive ourselves in our outer world as being independent things, especially independent of our seed ripenings of past behavior.

When that movement is happening in that central channel, we no longer have this misperception of self-existent subject object. We are experiencing subject object accurately, and we can gather those winds and do something with it that helps push our awareness into a direct experience that in Sutra is called the direct perception of emptiness. But when we use this method to get there, it's called a direct perception of the clear light. Same experience, different outcome.

By using the gross breath in Tonglen, the gross breath has a resonance with the movement in these inner channels.

For instance, when we get in great fear, we tend to hold our breath first, and then we pant real fast. When we're angry, our breath gets shorter. Our emotions are affected by our breath and our emotions affect our breath. In the same way, these subtle movements within our channels are reflections of our state of mind.

When we are intentionally slowing and lengthening our breath, it's helping to slow and lengthen, straighten these channels that allows the breath, the subtle wind to move less chaotically. That is going to eventually help us learn to move those winds intentionally.

Winds are moved by mind and mind is moved by winds, happens together.

Tonglen practice, by using our breath to carry out this task of taking pain and giving happiness, we are already setting up a harmonic resonance in our subtle body to prepare us to use it in specific ways in some future.

So part of Tonglen seed planting, that happens whether we are aware of it or not, but happens better when we are aware of it, is that it's preparing us for the methods that we will use someday to transform these things.

From the perception of made of flesh and blood to the perception of made of love, compassion, and wisdom. Tonglen is a particular practice that does that for us right from the get-go.

We learn Tonglen early on in our Mahayana practice. We maybe have never even heard of Diamond Way, let alone Diamond Way's subtle body work, and we're already planting the seeds for it to happen. So hooray for Tonglen.

Geshela went back then to that question, what comes first, the giving or taking?

We already said that we have to love enough, which is the giving, to care about their suffering, which begets the taking, and we need to take the suffering before we can give the happiness.

So love comes first in emotion, compassion comes first in action.

In Tonglen, we say we take the suffering first away so that they are more available to receive the happiness based on the Tonglen being the action.

But someone again says, yeah, but if you love them first, surely you would give them something before you take away their pain.

Pabongka Rinpoche, he points out that when you do Tonglen on a single breath, when you're zipping by the homeless guy, he says, when you do Tonglen that way, always give them happiness and then take their suffering. And it doesn't make sense.

But he says, the reason is that because of this thing about Tonglen and the resonance with the highest practices, in the highest practices, we're learning to always end on the inhale for a significant reason.

So when we do Tonglen in one breath, you want to end on the inhale. So you give first and take second. And it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense. It will still work.

But when we are taking the extended Tonglen, your love tells you to do it. And then the first thing you do is spend the time sending your wish into them to take their pain away, destroy our suffering, our misunderstanding, our ignorance, our selfishness, and then take the time to give them. So true to the Buddhist path, neither is right and neither is wrong—because of karma and emptiness.

[Dedication]

Questions

(124:00 student: They asked me to do the prayers for the people on Wednesday, which I said yes. And I was wondering what you would advise. Should I do the selfish flame or should I do the diamond? I don't know which, what, who will be there with me? What did you do? You did those, did you? The prayers for the people?)

I did do prayers for the people. I didn't do Tonglen.

(student: Oh, you didn't?)

Did I? I don't remember what I did. I'm so sorry. That the flame takes a little more explanation than the rose with the diamond. I personally prefer the flame because I want to see that stuff destroyed. I want to see myself using my ignorance to destroy itself. But Geshehla uses the diamond and the rose because people are attracted to that. And it helps, it softens the idea of taking somebody else's pain. So probably if you're going to have an audience that you don't think is quite so highly trained, use the rose and the diamond.

(student: And I have another question, if no one else, I can wait. It's not closely related, but it, I mean, it is closely related, but not about Tonglen. So I'm organ donor as a Bodhisattva. I want to use this body to give everything I can. But I had a debate about it with a friend of mine and she said, come on, in the moment of dying, I want to use that peace of mind to become a Buddha and not someone having cut my body open. I thought, what is your take on that?)

Yeah. You know, it is a conundrum because they have to keep the body alive to be able to have the organs fresh enough. And in our tradition, they say you haven't actually died until the liquids come out, which can take up to a week after clinical death is declared. But in our world, we don't get to wait for that to happen either. So it's like, which is better?

Ideal would be if you could go off by yourself and die and nobody will know and nobody will touch you, you'll be able to die. And be able to use, theoretically, use the opportunity to reach the clear light. But how likely are you going to get to do that? So if it's between ordinary human dying and organ donation, giving. I personally would choose, let this body be useful. And how could that go wrong? Let somebody else live better. It's gonna help. Whether it helps in that moment or later, then my guess we could learn practices to jump out of the body at the right moment and leave it. So it's a great conundrum, though. And something to think about.

(Student: I was remembering, I think it was death meditation practice where you similarly visualize black gooey stuff. And then it kind of like, you visualize it going through your body and coming out the bottom and into the mouth of that scary guy on the moon. Or is that all just a whole different thing with that? Yeah. I mean, is that another way if you can't visualize? Yeah. Can you add anything that doesn't burn up?)

Goes down and gobbles up by the Lord of death. I know, that's part of a purification practice. That's the visualization in purification practice. We use it in thousand angels of bliss. We use it in Vajrasattva. And so yeah, I mean, if you have a relationship with that idea, that practice, you could suck in that black ball and send it down into the mouth of Yama, as long as you pick up with it, your own ignorance and negative seeds. You could do that.

Have a great week. I will see you Friday morning. Okay. I love you. Bye bye.

All right, welcome back. We are Tonglen class number, I don't know. It's November 21, 2025. I thought we'd do class first and the meditation after. So we'll do our opening prayers first and then go to class.

So let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Act of Truth

(8:12) At this place in Geshehla's teaching us about tonglen practice and growing our Bodhichitta, he went into something called an Act of Truth.

It actually comes up in Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra's text. You'll see it in your reading.

Let me find our vocabulary here.

DENPAY TOK

DENPAY = truth

and somehow DENPAY TOK means an Act of Truth.

An Act of Truth means that we are deciding to do what we're going to do in response to this situation based upon our understanding of karma and emptiness, which means that we're going to choose an action—body, speech, or mind, but let's assume we're talking about a physical action here—that probably does not look like it's going to solve the problem, or address your immediate need, because you're looking at it from your understanding of, here's the conflict in this situation, what seeds do I need to plant to resolve this, versus our worldly thought, how do I fix this, right?

There must be a way our ignorant mind, ordinary human mind thinks, this is how I fix a problem like this, the worldly way.

An Act of Truth is to say, that was how I used to try to fix it. But this time, because I understand that what I do in the moment can't bring what happens next, I understand I need to affect this problem by way of seed planting rather than worldly way.

Then, if we actually do it and hold to it, we can say by the power of this truth, that I acted because of karma and emptiness, then may such and such come about. It‘s a way to word our Act of Truth.

To help understand an Act of Truth, Geshehla used the example of Gandhi in India. 

He says, Gandhi understood this principle of emptiness and karma in probably different words. But in his leadership, everybody was saying, we've got to fight the British to get them out of governing our country.

And he kept saying, no. Violence won't do it even if it looks like it does it. We must resist non-violently, absolutely non-violently.

And people would go, no, no, they're gonna hurt us. We'll all get killed.

He flatly refused.

There was an example apparently, one time where the guard was insisting that he carry his identification card with him all the time. I guess people were supposed to do that. And he refused. He said, no, I won't carry that card. His non-violent resistance, one piece of it.

The guard said, you carry that card or I'm gonna break your arm. And Gandhi took the card and he dropped it in the nearby fire in front of the guard. Then the guard said, okay, broke his arm.

So did defying the guard get his arm broken?

Looks like it, but no, right? With wisdom, we understand his arm got broken as a karmic ripening of some past violence he did to somebody else. He knew that. And was willing to demonstrate that to people.

So he's leading everybody in these acts of truth. How long did it take before those acts of truth—I don't wanna phrase that wrong. How long did it take before the result they were wanting to see happen, happened?

I looked it up. It took 20 years. So these Act of Truth, they're not miracle makers, although they could be.

I remember when I first heard about Act of Truth, it's like, well, great, I can establish an Act of Truth and do one deed in a different way than I ordinarily would have. And I could use the words of the Act of Truth to say, and so by the power of that deed, may I see emptiness directly on Monday. 

Then Monday comes around and it doesn't happen.

What's gonna happen to my belief in my Act of Truth, or my belief in myself doing an Act of Truth?

All of a sudden it's like, well, maybe it wasn't so true that I did that deed with a high intention. I'm not so good, oh man. I'm bad, I'm never gonna get there.

Or maybe it would be, well, these Acts of Truth don't really work. I'm gonna quit doing them.

Wrong conclusion, but only because of our wrong, our misunderstanding, thinking that an Act of Truth has something self-existent, something in it, from it that's gonna bring about what I want, because I do it as an Act of Truth.

I tried to think of an example to find this nuance of how to use an Act of Truth to increase the power of our seed planting. Because they explain that to choose to do something that's right karmically versus worldly has a separate seed planting power than the deed alone.

That's where the power of the Act of Truth comes in, that this power of this really conscious and stated intention to act according to wisdom that has its own seed planting power that takes time to ripen.

It's still a seed planting. So we can't expect it to plant an Act of Truth today and have it show its result in the next moment, or necessarily in 24 hours or necessarily a week. But once we've planted it, an Act of Truth is such that it will ripen.

There are some imprints that we plant in our mind and they're vague and not very powerful, and they may like shift, shift, shift, shift, shift for a long time. But because of our other deeds, they're getting influenced such that they actually never reach the threshold for bringing about their result.

We think every seed I plant is going to ripen into a result, and we should think that. 

But there are some seeds that actually will never ever make it.

We can cultivate that by doing our purification practices and et cetera to actually cultivate the fact that some seeds won't ever ripen. Thank you very much, right? I don't want them to ripen. Eventually we're going to have to damage or transform all of those seeds, but that comes later.

Acts of Truth Increase the Power of Our Deeds

An Act of Truth has this power to increase the power of the deed that we do as a result of it because we're choosing it so conscientiously from our growing understanding of truth.

An example, I tried to come up with, I thought, suppose that an opportunity for a promotion comes up at work and we want that promotion. But so does Bob. And so we both put in our applications for the promotion and in a worldly way, we would then be on our really best behavior, and every chance we'd get, we'd be trying to show how we'd be the greatest for the job, trying to get the job.

An Act of Truth might be, because I understand the power of karma and emptiness, I know Bob has applied for this job, so I'm going to use every chance I get to sing Bob's praises, to show how great Bob is in as many ways as I can. And I'm doing it as this Act of Truth.

Suppose then Bob does get the job.

Worldly me would go, why did I do that?

Wise me goes, wow, I helped Bob get that job. He's so happy. I'm going to help him be a great boss.

Suppose I do get the job. I might think, wow, look, maybe these prayers really work. 

There was this like little mantra going around ACI Diamond Mountain for a long time. It's like, hey, Lama, these prayers really work. Because people would have that experience of doing, this, it's kind of a clash of worldview, doing the opposite. And then, oh my gosh, they get some amazing result by the next term.

Back to my example. I could get the job, and then hopefully my wisdom would continue, and I would use my position to help everybody on my team that includes Bob, who's probably jealous and upset, to help them all shine.

If I didn't get the job, another way I could understand this would be, well, then the seeds I planted helping Bob get that job are growing, and their result will be even better, something better. And that my Act of Truth actually brought abou  the me in a position still waiting for this better thing to come about. Whereas if I had gotten the job, and this better thing came along, it's like maybe I would be limited, and I wouldn't even see it as an opportunity.

I can do this Act of Truth thinking the Act of Truth is going to get me the job

I can say, By the power of my pure intention, then may my deeds of singing Bob's praises get me this job.

Or our Act of Truth could be, By the power of the truth of trying to get this job by singing Bob's praises, may the highest and best for everybody come about.

Whatever the outcome, we go, okay, this is the highest and best coming about. 

Maybe the company goes to a third person. I don't get the job, Bob doesn't get the job. Third person gets the job. We go, hey, what's up with that?

Highest and best, right? So it really, the Act of Truth is the power on our own mind.

Does that mean it doesn't really work? We're just doing magical thinking?

No, that's how it works, do you see?

So if we word our Act of Truth in this really, really specific way—I want to see emptiness directly by Monday—we're limiting ourselves in what our Act of Truth can do. And it says something to our own mind that discounts the actual Act of Truth.

It's really hard to understand because it sounds like I'm justifying when Acts of Truth don't work, right? That's what it sounds like to me. But no, it's explaining Acts of Truth and how to set them up in such a way that they really can work.

We want our statement, our if-then statement, we want that then to be not limiting and really bigger than we're even starting from. Bigger than our worldly wish when we do our Act of Truth.

We'll see, there are words that we put together in a certain way. And so when we're doing our Tonglen, we can end that Tonglen with an Act of Truth. 

I haven't been doing it so far in our tonglens, and I forget to do it myself in my daily practices. So I'm happy to share with you to help me do better.

But when we do our dedication prayer, the dedication prayer is kind of an Act of Truth because it says, by the power of the goodness we've just done, may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom.

So our dedication is an Act of Truth. Because if we started class with the understanding that what we're doing in class is planting seeds in our minds to grow into something bigger in the future, as opposed to, I'm in class to learn something.

It's like, we are in class to learn something. Yes, but. That's the worldly reasons we're in class. We could sit in class and not learn a thing, right? We could sit in class and learn stuff that if you asked me, I would say, I didn't teach that. Right? Because you're hearing what you're hearing.

(27:03) There were apparently students in Lord Buddha's audience when he was teaching something like Heart Sutra, and what that student heard was a Diamond Way teaching. Lama Christie from time to time, she would say something like that. You know, I was in that ACI 10 course and I was getting tantric teachings. It's like, no, those are Sutra, right? But we all hear what our karma is ripening. So that's really the reason we're here, is we're planting seeds. So we can do this whole class as an Act of Truth, and in the end, our dedication prayer makes it so, right? And so that's why we set it up the way we do at the beginning. It's kind of fun.

It's like the whole system of our practice and learning is built in such a way that we don't even have to know the details of what we're doing and why we're doing it. We just follow the program.

Geshehla always says, just donkey stubbornness, follow the program, and the changes will happen.

But how much more powerfully we can do it when we understand what we're doing, when we're doing it. I kind of feel like, you know, as teenagers, we got to that point where parents say, do this, do that. And then it's like, tell me why? And if I agree with you, I'll do it. And if I don't, I won't, right? It's kind of like that.

At some point in our spiritual growth, we hit the teenage, I'm not going to do it just because you say so. Tell me why. So we're learning why, of all of it. And then it's up to us to decide, okay, that makes sense. I'll do it. If it makes sense and we don't do it, it's our fault, right? It is being stubborn.

Generally an Act of Truth is like,

If it's true, I had some pure intention here,

then may what I've prayed for come true.

But again, don't think that that means in the next moment or necessarily next week. 

Geshela says, keep this up over time and it's liberating, because we're growing this ability to constantly recognize here's a situation, here's the worldly way I would usually act, thinking that what comes next is the result of what I did and realizing, no, that's not how the world works. I'm going to respond to this situation using it to plant seeds for the ripening of which, whether it happens sooner or later, doesn't matter, it will be great.

Then it's like, yeah, but do you solve the problem in the moment, the in the moment problem by doing that?

It's hard because it's like, no, but you don't solve the in the moment problem by doing the worldly thing either. It just sometimes, even often, looks like it does, so we get fooled.

I don't know, I can't think of it, just a really ridiculous example. Laundry's ready to hang out on the line and the worldly thing to do is hang the laundry on the line to dry it.

The other, the wisdom thing, what is the wisdom thing?

Is it to just leave the laundry in the basket, expecting it to dry? Or do you take the laundry basket to somebody else? Or do you go to your neighbor and say, hey, do you have laundry to hang up and leave yours, but do theirs? Like, how do we really use this stuff day to day?

Or do we cultivate this different state of mind? I'm hanging up my laundry in order to stop the suffering of the world.

How does hanging up laundry stop the suffering of the world?

Because now that's why I'm doing it, right? Our intention

Well, that's crazy.

It's not crazy. Anything can be a seed planting deed to stop the suffering of the world if we think of it that way. Well, anything that doesn't harm somebody, although technically even that, but anything that doesn't harm anybody.

Conscious Behaviour Choices

Acts of Truth aren't so much the thing that we do. It's what goes into the choice and the state of mind we have as we're doing them. When we have that conscious choice and state of mind, it might make a difference in how we choose to react in a situation of conflict, for instance, or a situation of great pleasure that we want to cling to and hold to. Our Act of Truth, may I share this? May I offer this?

Different ways to use it.

As we get habituated to that, always choosing the highest kindness that we can find in a given situation. Geshela says, we'll reach this level of happiness because we're getting off, we're getting to that place where we know that we're always trying our best to choose to do the right thing, the highest thing. And we're less reactive to what appears to happen next, because we know those two are not related.

Whatever happens next is coming out of my own seeds. So we're less trying to avoid and trying to grasp, and we're in the space of plant mode.

It's pleasurable to be in that mindset.

Every unpleasantness, all right, we burn it off. It's an opportunity to act in a new, different way.

Every pleasure, we're burning it off too, so we want to share it. We can offer it to try to perpetuate the pleasure, right? When we say the suffering of change is the end and then it's gone, the delicious bowl of ice cream, you come down to the last bite. We don't really want ice cream that lasts forever, I don't think. But that pleasure of ice cream, we want the pleasure to go on.

And what is it about the ice cream that gives that pleasure, but turnips don't?

Like why can't turnips give this pleasure just like ice cream.

Why can't breathing give us pleasure just like ice cream?

It's the pleasure we want to go on, not the ice cream.

Acts of Truth.

(36:21) There'll be times when our perception of what's highest or the right thing to do will be mistaken. Until we're omniscient, we don't exactly know. But we have the guidelines to follow—our vowed behaviors, which is what to avoid, which is a doing, right? And avoiding is a doing. But then we can take those what to avoid and flip them around to what to do, which helps us have a list of behaviors to choose from when we've already thought out the opposite of the avoidance, do you see?

One time years ago during retreat time, I sat down with all my vows and I thought, what would it be like when these…, what would the opposite be? Like I will avoid praising myself and criticizing others. What would they mean?

It would be, wow, I would be praising others all the time. And criticizing myself, well, I'm good at that already, but in the sense of being self-correcting, right? Checking myself constantly. And then it's like, wow, cool. Like what kind of result would that bring about? The seed planting of praising others all the time.

It's like, wow, you're gonna end up in a world where people see you highly. Your qualities are being praised all the time. Now it's like, do I really want that? Well, you know, they say you think of your holy Buddha who's looking after you and you think of their good qualities and you sing their praises. And like, that's all we have to do. Because it's such a goodness seed planting to think of your holy Buddha is like, wow, they're so beautiful, they're so wise, they're so amazing—singing their praises.

So with all of our vows, we can do this exercise.

Once I did, it was like, oh my goodness, these vows are set up for us to create paradise. Like they will create abundance, they will create safety, they will create these perfect partnerships, they will create these beautiful still minds and they will create the save the world. They're like built into the vows. All we have to do is avoid this and do that.

Then I looked at all the positives and it's like, okay, I can design my Me into somebody who points out people's goodnesses, does this, does that. It just helped me so much better.

We don't take vows to do that, because we can't keep ones that say, I will do this all the time. But we can avoid things. We can vow to avoid things.

Why did I go off onto that? Because it's how it helps us know what behavior to choose to in these Acts of Truth that I'm going to do. Because that's what they came from. Our vowed behaviors comes from an omniscient being, who says, this is what will help us, rather than needing to make it up ourself, figure it out ourself. And we rely upon our vows.

Doing the karmically highest thing must bring about a good result, a pleasurable result. So if it looks like a bad result come from doing an Act of Truth, the two cannot be related—like Gandhi's broken arm and his passive resistance, burning the card in the fire. That's where the wisdom comes in, holding the world to view, which is what makes the Act of Truth, the Act of Truth. Okay. Got it?

Acts of Truth.

Tonglen as Act of Truth

Doing Tonglen is an Act of Truth. That's the point here. Because why else would you decide, may all that pain and suffering come to me. May I give away all my happiness.

If you went to somebody who came to you, who's having terrible distress, their life is just so messed up. And you said to them, look, every time you see somebody in pain, say to the universe, give me that pain. I will give them my happiness.

That person would probably say, hi, I love you. Goodbye. Right? That makes no sense at all. I'm struggling. I can't take on another piece of suffering. I'm not going to ask for it.

Yet, wouldn't that be a really powerful thing to do to stop the cycle of your own downward spiral life?

Really, really difficult.

It's such an extraordinary goodness to be one who has the seeds to sit in a class like this and be inspired with the idea, oh my gosh, I can use my breath to act from my growing compassion, to imagine that I'm taking somebody's pain, willing to do it, knowing I can't do it, but understanding that the wish to do it is stronger than any worldly thing that I would try to help them.

Doesn't mean we don't do the worldly thing for someone if we can, when we can.

We can always Tonglen. It changes our seeds to see their suffering, and that's the only way to change their suffering anyway, is to change our seeds.

So just to Tonglen qualifies as an Act of Truth, because there's no other reason to do it than our growing understanding of mental seeds and the infinite possibility of our experiences.

Acts of Truth.

Verses from the Lama Chupa

(44:42) Let's go back now to Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.

Last class, we were learning the verses from Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen‘s Lama Chupa prayer practice. We're in the section of asking the Lama for blessings, and the blessings we're asking for is the realizations of each of the stages of the path, the Lam Rims.

We're in that section of asking for blessings to grow our Bodhichitta, our wish to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, our Bodhichitta in its form in our appearing nature. They call it deceptive Bodhichitta, but it's not deceptive. It's in the appearing world.

In order to grow our goodness to reach the Bodhichitta that is the direct perception of emptiness Bodhichitta.

Same word, different manifestations of what that word is about.

I want to go back through it a little bit. So we're in the place of growing our Bodhichitta, which means we're in the cusp between wanting our own freedom from suffering and recognizing clearly enough that, oh my gosh, it's really possible.

For many of us to come to that understanding, our heart goes, well, if it's possible for me, it's possible for others. And that doesn't occur to everybody. But for those that it does, that's the cusp of the Mahayana, the greater vehicle.

We grow that greater vehicle to include all conscious beings, not just the ones we love, not just the ones like ourselves, not just human ones, but all of them.

And we go through a process or there are two different methods through which we grow this wisdom heart. One is that method of exchanging self and others. The other is the method of the seven step cause and effect, of which there are eight steps. 

In Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's prayer, he's not going through those one by one, but he has them all included, both the exchanging self and others and the seven step cause and effect method.

In that section, as he's building it, we'll see in the end he says, and the way to grow these two methods of Bodhichitta-ing is Tonglen. It's like, wow.

So in the start, not complete start, in the start of this, he says, bless me to see that cherishing all these mother beings and the wish to see them all reach every form of happiness is the door that leads to infinite numbers of perfect personal qualities. Bless me then to love them all more than my own life, even if every one of them should suddenly think me their enemy.

And it seems a little odd. It's like, wait a minute. If I'm loving everybody more and more, aren't they all gonna love me back? And it's like, yeah, eventually. But what about in the next moment or the next moment or the next moment?

We could imagine a case where, you know, we have a friend who's known us all through college and work life, and they knew me to be a certain way and to like the same things they like. And then something happens to me and I start on this spiritual path. And, you know, come on Surani, let's go out to the bar on Friday. And it's like, oh, no, thanks. Another Friday, come on. I, you know, no, I've got something else I need, right?

Their feelings are gonna get hurt if we don't somehow make it better, right? Because our feelings would get hurt if a friend changed in such a way that they seem to leave me out. And it's like, I don't know, human nature might be that me, the friend whose feelings are hurt, which might try to interfere with my friend's happiness, because I feel offended, I feel hurt—ugly, and then maybe I start some rumor about them that they then have to deal with in some way, right? Ugly kind of behavior that might happen because of the goodness one is growing. Not because of the goodness, but because the goodness that we're doing, changing ourself is stirring up a sludge in our own heart.

So maybe we get to this place where, you know, our ability to love is really growing. We've cleaned out so much of the yuck of our own seeds, but there's still this layer of sludge at the bottom that as we continue to challenge ourselves in our loving compassion, that sludge starts to get stirred up and it'll manifest in our world as these other beings that I'm loving, seeming to get ugly and awful and mean and terrible.

Geshehla says, it's actually a clue that you're on the cusp of something of a bigger change, and that rather than, oh man, if this is how people are, maybe I don't really want to do it, is the risk—losing our Bodhichitta—as opposed to going, whoa, I must be on the cusp of something big. I will keep loving them.

He says it does happen. So use Tonglen on yourself, on them. Recognize it when it happens and don't doubt. Bear down, continue.

And here Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is saying, okay.

[87] Bless me then to reach the ability 

To see myself and others equal, 

And to exchange them for myself 

In a state of mind, to sum it all up, 

Where I finally grasp the difference: 

The problems that come from acting

As infants do, thinking only of themselves; 

And the good that comes from acting 

As the Lords of the Able do, 

Thinking only of what others need.

I love this verse because it just catches my heart.

Infants are still in survival mode. They have to think only of themselves.

Before we've seen emptiness directly, we are infant, because all of our seeds that have been planted have been planted with me first. And so they're going to ripen as me first, even if we don't want me first anymore, they're still going to ripen that way. 

So still infants.

Somewhere along the line our growing understanding of karma and emptiness, we become teenagers, says Master Kamalashila. It's kind of sweet, but you know, teenagers, it's maybe not any less selfish as teenagers. We just kind of are better aware of it than we are as infants.

Either way, Buddhas become Buddhas by way of their infinite loving compassion, which means their sense of self that's in their seeds now includes everybody, all beings, all existence, actually. So their love covers all, their compassion covers all.

Their needs are met, others needs are met, but they're not ever thinking, my needs versus your needs, because there's only all for them. So their compassion manifests as what any being needs at any time.

Does the being see them that way? Probably not.

I see the tree outside. I see a car accident. I see my next headache.

I don't see that as Buddha manifesting to me.

I could, but I don't.

But Buddha does, all of them.

It‘s like, whoa, how wonderful it would be to move through life with this kind of being what others need and want. Like, isn't it sweet when you end up with somebody and then all of a sudden something happens there and some kind of crisis, and you're the one there to give them the hug ,or you're the one there to give them the ride that they need. You're the solution to their problem. You didn't intend it, it just happens.

It's like, wow. They're saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. And you're saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. Because it's so amazing to get to be that for them.

Imagine that, like part of your identity, is being that.

Anyway, we're saying to the Lama, please bless me, that I can reach that level of awareness of existence, that I can be thinking of only what others need without the underlying, What about me? What about me?—is in there without that. How wonderful.

[88] Cherishing myself

Is the door to every 

Trouble that there is; 

Cherishing my Mothers

Is the foundation 

Of every quality I could have; 

Bless me then that this deep practice 

Of exchanging others for myself 

Might become the very heart 

Of my daily practice [originally ‘path’].

We'll learn that practice specifically in Master Shantideva's Course 11. Tonglen is a part of it. To do tonglen is a kind of exchanging self and others because we're taking the time to recognize another's distress and try to understand it well enough to know what to take. And so, to imagine putting ourselves in their shoes and thinking, how would I feel if I were in this situation? And then that's how we identify the black yuck inside them. We'll be wrong sometimes, because their experience is their experience. We'll actually always be wrong. But we'll be right in the sense of, well, this is what my seeds are ripening, and so that's what I'm willing to take that. And then anything else that it might be as well.

[89] And so bless me my Holy Lama, 

Bless me, Lama of Compassion, 

That every living being there is 

May find every kind of happiness: 

Let all the evil deeds and obstacles, 

Let all the pain that ever comes 

To every living being, 

Every one of them my Mother, 

Come and ripen upon myself, 

Ripen upon me now, 

And let any goodness I ever do,

And all my happiness, 

Be sent away to others.

In this sequence of verses, we're seeing the steps of the seven step cause and effect method. All beings, we've said that multiple times. They're all my mothers. This verse points out, first we state our love for them, then we recognize their suffering and our compassion wants to take it from them. And then we can actually give them the goodness that our love wants to give them up here.

That all takes us to the personal responsibility. They're my mother. So if we're standing with a group of people and we see a dog fall down the ravine and we stand around, who's going to go down and get the dog? It's like, oh, my mother, you're the one who goes. It's this idea.

But then we recognize any worldly thing I do falls short. Yes, I do the worldly thing, but then that my mother will just go on to hurt in some other way.

How can I help her ultimately, her/them, ultimately? I can't know how to help ultimately until I'm Buddha, until I'm omniscient, until my compassion and wisdom is so big that I become what they need to stop their suffering forever. That's Bodhichitta.

So from mother to love, to compassion, to love, to personal responsibility, to, oh, my gosh, I can't do it without being Buddha, is growing our Bodhichitta.

We are growing that by way of our Tonglen practice. I'm going to show you how, if I ever get there.

(62:58)(Student: May I ask something? I still don't understand the concept of truth in the words of Act of Truth, not actually. So what does it mean? Truth means something else than we know in a Western way, I suspect.)

Yeah, truth means, an Act of Truth means I have chosen the behavior to do based on the understanding of karma and emptiness, based on the understanding that nothing has any nature of its own. So what makes me experience something the way I do is the ripening results of my own past deeds, which means my own current deeds become the cause for anything I experience in the future. That's the truth we're talking about here.

Yeah, it's packed. Like it takes a lot to understand all of that, right? 10 years of study. You're doing fine. Act of Truth. Because like our logic should say, well, there really is no such thing as truth. Truth for everybody. There's no such thing. And this school would agree with that.

And it is true that every conscious being is what they are based on ripening seeds from past deeds they've planted. That is the explanation for existence. So they would say, that's what we mean by truth. But it's not a self-existent truth. It's an explanation of existence.

(69:03) I just wanted to show you this vocabulary for the blessing.

YIONG JAMPA

YIONG = pretty

YIONG JAMPA = pretty love

NYING JE = the essence of our heart compassion

HLAKSAM NAMDAK = that personal responsibility

JANGCHUB SEMKYE = our wish for Buddhahood, our Bodhichitta

The sequence that Lobsang Chukyi Gyelstsen is taking us through in our prayer is that we're asking for the blessings to grow these states of mind.

The YIONG JAMPA is trying to convey the kind of love that we have like a mother for her only precious child. It's like, as the infant, they can do no wrong, right? And you pick out their voice amongst the thousands in the crowd of children.

Then as that child grows, yes, they have their own personality traits, et cetera, but mother's love, fathers as well, mother's love is still this one special. YIONG, pretty love it's called.

It's not saying it's a lesser kind of love at all. Pretty love is this, oh my gosh, they are just so special to me. And so we've already set up that all these beings are our mothers, and so they've benefited us, and so we wanna repay them.

But now the love that we're growing for them is the love of a mother for their child.

It's a little schizophrenic, right? First, I'm the child, they're all my mothers. But then the love I have is as if I'm the mother and they're the children. Which I don't know, I'm not a mother, but when I, it's like I relate to that much more. I had a wonderful mother. I do love her very much. And I did wanna repay her. I look forward to taking care of her and then I didn't get to. Yet, when it's like take care of other people, it's like, no, they're my children, not my mother, right?

So it's both states of mind that we're relying upon to grow this love that becomes a Buddha's love. YIONG JAMPA.

NYING JE is that compassion that we've talked about.

Doing Tonglen, deciding to Tonglen is a method through which our YIONG JAMPA grows, our NYING JE grows, our HLAKSAM NAMDAK grows and our Bodhichitta grows.

Without having to say, okay, now I'm going to Tonglen somebody to give them YIONG JAMPA. You don't have to do that. We just Tonglen.

Then, son of a gun, these things, they start to bubble up out of us because they're in there too.

How do I know? Because here you are in a class, hearing me talk about them. Those are your seeds. Thank you very much.

Okay, so let's go back to the prayer verse.

Once we know all this that I've been explaining, it's all included in this one prayer. 

[89] And so bless me my Holy Lama, 

Bless me, Lama of Compassion, 

That every living being there is 

May find every kind of happiness: 

Let all the evil deeds and obstacles, 

Let all the pain that ever comes 

To every living being, 

Every one of them my Mother, 

Come and ripen upon myself, 

Ripen upon me now, 

And let any goodness I ever do,

And all my happiness, 

Be sent away to others.

Can we send our happiness away to others? No.

Can we take their pain away? No.

So why wish to do it? There's always the answer. Seed planting.

Tonglen works by its seed planting. We're going to talk about it more. Everything works by seed planting.

That would be an Act of Truth to always seed plant instead of think I can make something happen in the next moment.

It seems almost impossible, but it's not.

[90] This world and every being 

Who lives upon this world 

Are filled with the results 

Of every wrong ever done— 

Let a shower of suffering fall, 

Of things I never wanted. 

Bless me to see it all as a way 

That all the fruits of my own bad deeds 

Might finally be exhausted— 

Bless me to learn to turn every problem 

That ever comes to me 

Into a path that takes me further.

We'll learn this practice more specifically when we learn ACI 14, the Lojong course. It is a method through which we learn how to view the immediate circumstances of our life.

When they're pleasant, great. Good seeds ripening, I'll share them.

When they're unpleasant, great. Bad seeds ripening, I will burn them off and act differently. Act with greater wisdom, do an Act of Truth instead of a worldly act.

So that either way, it's like great. It's hugely different state of mind than the ordinary human one—I want pleasure, I wanna avoid unpleasure—and having that direct our day. Because the harder we try to avoid unpleasure, it seems the less we're able to. 

And it makes sense because we're doing the wrong things to try to avoid unpleasant. 

But we get to this point where it doesn't matter, pleasant or unpleasant.

Not meaning we become like robot, but meaning at either place, it's a seed planting opportunity and we're eager to do it.

[91] In brief, bless me that I learn to change 

Everything that appears to me, 

Whether it be good or bad, 

Into a path for increasing 

The two forms of the Wish 

For enlightenment, 

Through practicing the five powers, 

Essence of all the Dharma there is, 

And experience then only joy.

[92] Bless me that I may learn 

The skillful means of all four practices

Where I turn everything 

That I ever encounter

From hour to hour 

Into something for me to meditate upon.

Bless me that I bring

Great meaning to this life of leisure and fortune,

Using the teachings to practice developing the good heart,

All the various commitments

And the different kinds of trainings.

[93] Bless me to use the mystic machine

Of giving and taking, riding on the breath,

Love and compassion

And the willingness to free all beings myself,

To practice that one thought,

The wish for enlightenment,

To free every living being

From this vast sea of suffering.

This is the other verse in Lama Chupa that is specific to Tonglen practice.

We have those two, I think it was verse [89], the Bless me my holy Lama, bless me Lama of Compassion, that verse and this one. This one is part of the Lojong practices from a specific Lojong called LOJONG DUN DUNMA, which was first written down by a Lama called Tokme Sangpo in the 1200s AD in Tibet.

These practices called Lojong, which means Mind Training, but in the sense of growing our heart's loving compassion, growing our BodhicHitta. Those practices about exchanging self and others and the seven step cause and effect to Bodhichitta, they were teachings that were handed down one-on-one teacher to student based on the teacher's perception of the student's readiness. For a few generations, they were held deeply secret.

Then at some point this particular Lama Tokme Sangpo, he recognized that the reasoning for keeping them deeply secret was that people who weren't well prepared would hear that teaching—Wish to take all suffering onto yourself and wish to give all your happiness, all your goodness away to others—and if people are still in this mindset of survival mode, their reaction to that teaching is gonna say, no, I can't do that, that's nuts.

To reject a high teaching is worse than to not have heard it at all in a given lifetime. 

Those teachings are apparently such a high powerful teaching that it was worse to hear it and reject it than to not hear it at all. It's interesting.

But Tokme Sangpo, he recognizes that if there's one person that doesn't get to hear it and they were ready, he says, to me, that's worse than giving it to somebody who rejects it.

I don't know the circumstance, but I could imagine that maybe by his time, maybe he was getting close to the end of his time on earth, and he was thinking, if I leave this practice and my students don't teach it to others, it's gonna get lost in the world. So he wrote it down for the first time. That's the gist of this story. He finally wrote it down, the LOJONG DUN DUNMA.

He didn't write the Lojong, he just wrote it down. And so it got carried down to the lineage so that we have it.

After his bravery to do that, other Lojongs got written down as well. And once they were written down, they're findable, so then the teachings started going public.

Actually they caught on in Tibet to a great extent and became this beautiful whole wave of Lojong practice.

Tonglen is like a Crane Machine

In the LOJONG DUN DUNMA, there are these snippets of wisdom. One of them says, of course now I can't find it in my notes. It says, use the two, something like use the two to take away pain and give happiness. I'll find it and I'll give it to you exactly.

But it doesn't say do Tonglen. But it's the reference to using our winds and mind directed towards stopping suffering and bringing happiness.

And it's referenced to this idea of a mystic machine. In other places, this mystic machine is translated as a crane machine. You know how a crane, a great big crane, it's this big machine that allows us to lift some really heavy object up many stories, that it would be almost impossible to get that big heavy object up the stairs. Just it would take many, many strong people to do it.

But with a crane, it's like, well, easy, hard work, but easy.

What if you're one of the slaves in Egypt building the pyramids, struggling, toiling with those big, huge, heavy blocks. And somebody comes along with a crane machine. And it's like, ah, just put it on here and the driver of the crane puts it on the top.

It would be like magic. Oh my gosh, that saved us so much trouble.

Tonglen, the practice of giving and taking writing on the breath is like this crane machine lifting this heavy burden of our old world view up through the levels of the developing Bodhichitta, the seven step method, the exchanging self and other method.

Tonglen is this magical machine that shows up in ancient Egypt.

Our worldview and our suffering is the ancient Egypt slaves struggling. Along comes the crane machine, Tonglen practice and our heart gets elevated.

So easily compared to the struggle of just going through life after life learning lessons.

What does it lift us through?

Growing our love, growing our compassion, growing our willingness to free all beings ourselves, growing that into the state of heart of Bodhichitta—I will become Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. That's what I'm doing day to day. I'm in that process to free every living being from this vast sea of suffering.

It's important, this word willingness, because even as fully enlightened beings, we still cannot take people's suffering from them.

As Buddha, we have the ultimate willingness to do so. And that willingness manifests as the compassion that manifests as being what they need. But that Buddha can't make me see them doing that for me.

I often think, man, it must be frustrating to be a Buddha.

But no, not if frustrating is a negative state of mind, right? Infinite patience, so willingness.

Are we willing to take somebody's pain? And it's like, yeah, knowing I can't really do it. I can say I'm willing.

But what if we really could do it? Would we still be willing?

We do want to dance with that a little bit, for our own mind. But it will be never the case that we can take somebody's suffering onto ourselves, Even if we tonglen somebody with cancer, and then, oh my gosh, a month later, I get the same diagnosis they have. Our heart might say, oh my gosh, I made a mistake. But it would be a misunderstanding. We can't take the wish to do so and the willingness to do so, and then to just use our breath and our imagination to pretend we can do so, that's the crane machine to our Bodhichitta.

Tonglen Works on the Subtle Body—Winds and Mind

Why is it the crane machine?

Because of this resonance between our gross breath and our imagining with our subtle wind and subtle mind that makes up our subtle body.

We, as humans, we have this gross body, and we have this gross body that has inner organs and a structure, and we believe that this is my real body and that inner structure is my real inner structure. It is, and it isn't.

This body also has a subtle structure that—with our sense organs, we cannot see—but we have. It is as real as our brains and lungs, and it's called the channels, winds and drops.

These channels are subtle pathways through which our conscious moves, consciousness moves from place to place, is directed to move from need to need, not place to place, from need to need.

For instance, we have a consciousness that happens as we eat. To experience eating, there's a consciousness that has to go up to where those sensations are, and then there has to be a consciousness that goes down as we have the experience of swallowing, and a consciousness that has to be doing whatever we say the stomach's doing, that becomes a subtle consciousness. We're not aware of it.

So anything that's happening, there has to be this movement of the mind. The mind cannot move itself. So moving in these pathways called channels is something called wind. It's what we call subtle movement, and those winds and the mind, they ride like horse and rider.

LUNG SEM JUPA JIPA. The mind can't move without a wind.

Where the wind goes is directed by the mind, mostly, like a rider that's riding intentionally. You can be a rider on the horse, and the horse can be going anywhere it wants. Dangerous business.

These subtle movements, and the mind that rides on those movements, has a correspondence, a resonance with our gross breath, and what we put on that gross breath.

The winds in the subtle body are not subtle version of the breath. That's different. But as the subtle body winds move, so moves the outer breath. And as the outer breath moves, it affects these subtle winds as well.

For example, when we're really angry or really fearful, our breath will get really choppy and short. Maybe we'll even hold it. That affects the subtle body such that that fear, like cramps us, into fight or flight reaction. If we can catch that pattern at the level of our breathing and consciously, intentionally slow it down, regulate it, the experience is that the central nervous system calms down.

What's happening is that these winds and mind that are getting all trapped, calm and can move more slowly, or effectively, they have a resonance.

In an ordinary condition, meaning ignorant, selfish me, these channels through which the winds and mind flow, they're twisted, knotted, kinked, clogged, frayed. And it makes the winds and mind, they move with difficulty. All of that difficulty is experienced by us, not as, oh my gosh, my channels are all clogged up, but as anxiety, hurt, jealousy, all of these different patterns, or back pain, nausea.

All our experiences of life are resonances of this pattern of flow of the winds and mind. When it's flowing, kinked, frayed, clogged, life is kinked, frayed, clogged.

When our thoughts and heart become more pure, more kind, more loving, then the result is that these channels are opening up and the winds and mind can flow more easily.

So it's like chicken or the egg. What starts first, cleaning the channels or growing a good heart?

For some people, they work on their channels first.

One method of working on our channels is yoga exercise, Tai Chi exercise, Qigong exercise, lots of different ways to do it. Music, dance… They'll all have this effect on a subtle body, whether we know it or not.

When we use them intentionally, we can be more effective and we can do it by intentionally trying to grow our love and compassion.

When we intentionally grow our love and compassion and we have that ride on our breath, we are creating this resonance in the subtle body that helps those channels open up, the winds and mind run more smoothly, that allows our Tonglen practice to be more natural, more easeful, more wanting to do it, more willing to do it, more automatic. Happening eventually even unaware.

The beauty of Tonglen is that it's setting us up for these changes in our subtle body that if we continue on this path in particular, and go into the Diamond Way, the Diamond Way practice is about working at that subtle body level specifically.

If we've already been doing it with tonglen, guess what, there's not much to do when you get to your creation and completion stage. Like it'll come easily if we even need to do it at all.

They're making this case for Tonglen is actually a Sutra practice that's Diamond Way practice together. It's so beautiful to get to hear that instead of just to be told do Tonglen, it's a beautiful practice. Which is what I learned and did for the first 10 years of my Buddhist path and it serves. It still serves me.

Okay, so enough said, let's do our sit. 

Meditation: Complete Tonglen including Taking & Giving

(99:10) For this sit, Geshela suggested that we choose a different person than we've been working on, if you've been using the same person—just for a challenge to our own mind.

I'm going to add to that, however, that if you feel like your Tonglen is building a deep connection with that person in terms of how you seem to be helping them, then stick with them, it's okay. Because in this time, we're going to add the first TONG part, the giving.

Still this person that we're going to use, somebody you love, somebody you care about, because it makes our Tonglen easier to do.

Then I'm going to do the preliminary called the Lama Blessing Preliminary because I talked too long. Then we'll do the taking first, a little bit faster than usual, and then, because I want time enough for the giving part.

Settle your body, please.

Bring your attention to your breath.

Coming to the breath first triggers our mental habit to turn inside, to turn on your meditating mind.

Recall this precious holy being, your own personal guide is there with you.

Ask them to bless you with this ability to do this session, to learn from it.

See them agree and they beam a light of their blessings into you.

Then bring to mind this person that we will Tonglen.

In your mind's eye, see where they are.

And imagine you can invisibly be right there with them.

Recognize the distress that they are in, be specific.

Recognize the feelings, their reaction, what they intend to do about it.

Feel your growing wisdom that sees, oh, this is coming out of their seeds driven by past misunderstanding. And feel your understanding that our own seeds are ripening to see this person in this kind of distress.

So your wish to help them grows really strong.

And by the power of your concentration, you see all the black yuck of that particular distress inside their subtle body.

Because of our concentration, it gathers into that tight little ball in the middle of their chest.

Use three breaths to gather it all.

Then decide that we will take it from them and turn your focus to your exhales. Seeing that ribbon of exhale, go towards them and then into them, and then hook into that black little ball.

Then just shift your focus to your inhales, drawing that black ball up and out of them. 

Easy, slow, nice inhales until you have that little black ball hovering below your own nostrils.

Identify it again, then leave it there.

Look into your own chest.

Doggone it, there's that little flame of my own selfishness, my own misunderstanding. 

And I can use this willingness to take their suffering in the form of that black ball to destroy both it and my misunderstanding, and I'm going to do it.

So when you're ready, you know what to do.

Start with the long exhale.

Then rest in that absence of that stuff, breathing normally.

Then your love stirs forth and you look again at that person and you see them. 

They're suddenly so relieved.

They know what they need to do in this circumstance. They have confidence.

And then your love says, and wouldn't it be wonderful if they could really get some ease in their lives, some happiness. If they could actually get some of those things that they're struggling for.

And so think of something, one material thing that you either know or believe that they would like to have,

and maybe one emotion that they would like to be feeling,

or maybe some spiritual goal and feel in your heart.

Wouldn't it be fun if I could give them those things?

And so by having that thought, you see that the inside of your own body is this beautiful white light, so peaceful and knowing and loving.

We decide I'm going to send that white light into them and use it to give them this happiness.

And so again, focus on your exhale.

This time what's exhaling is some of this glowing white light.

The light inside you is not diminishing. It's flowing, a beam of it is flowing out towards them, towards them, towards them.

And this time as it reaches them, it spills over their outer body,

and some of it goes into them on their inhales.

And that white light that's bathing them from the outside, as they experience through it, they don't see it. What they experience is that suddenly they have that material thing they were wishing for.

Maybe it's a delicious cup of coffee.

Maybe it's their child coming home for Christmas.

Maybe it's that reliable car.

No limit to what your white light can help them perceive.

And then the white light flowing to their inside, filling them with that white light on the inside.

Maybe they're experiencing it as this deep peacefulness, or their jealousy turns to admiration for someone.

Whatever you believe would help them be happy, your light becomes that for them.

See them enjoying the state of mind, of heart.

Feel yourself enjoying this state of mind, this heart.

Then release that image.

Bring your invisible you back into this visible you in this room, in this class.

[Dedication]

Our dedication prayer is also an Act of Truth prayer. We can add

By the power of the blessings of Those Gone Thus

By the power of the truth of karma and emptiness,

By the power of my pure willingness to free all beings myself,

May all that I have prayed for here so purely come to pass.

Isn't that fun? Sending them white light and then like anything they want on fun practice. It's fantasy. Yes. And it's planting seeds. No limit to what you can Tonglen. It feels so good when we're done. So yeah, great.

So thank you so much for the opportunity. Have a lovely weekend. We'll see you again Monday morning. We have a few classes yet to do together.

Thank you all. Bye-bye.

Welcome back. We are Tonglen Morning Group. This is November 24th, 2025.

I've set my schedule for 2026 now, assuming anybody wants to go on. And so I will attach it when I send the link for the recording with this class. You're welcome to have a look. We're going to try to do ACI 11, 12, and 13, and the Six Flavors of Emptiness Practice module all next year.

I was looking at it, and it's like remembering my junior year in high school and junior year in college. For me, the junior year, the classes were hardest. The mental afflictions were the hardest. Everything was the hardest, and I came out the other side better for it. So those particular series of courses, Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, and then Logic Course, they're hard in the sense of pushing our worldview. Courses 11 and 12, and then Logic 13 is just hard in that it's lists and ideas, and it seems really abstract, when in fact it is very concrete. So it'll be a challenging year. I hope you're up for it. And of course, you let me know that you want to go on, because from our students' side, we need to ask and not just assume, oh, she'll give this course next. So I'll send that. Then also, Chris, we're going into the holiday weekend for you and me, but I will do class on Friday morning. So if you have people, you're welcome to miss it, but please don't.

This morning, or this class, we'll start with our opening prayers and go right into our meditation. And this time, it's a very different version of a tonglen practice. It just shows us that we have these options. And then the rest of the class, we get to dig into, Does Tonglen work? We'll explore it.

So let's gather our minds here, as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Meditation: Tonglen for Beings in the Hell Realm

(10:40) Settle your body, please.

Then bring your attention to your breath at your nostrils. We'll use 10 breaths.

Use the time to tune in your focus, brighten up the brightness, turn on the fascination, and shift from breath focus to our preliminaries.

Begin with taking refuge in Bodhichitta.

Think of the protection that would come from loving so big that we refuse to be unkind no matter what.

How would that protect us?

Now bring to mind that precious holy being there, your own personal guide.

Think of their Bodhichitta, their big love that makes them come to you just by way of your thinking of them.

Feel your admiration for them, our aspiration to be able to love like they love.

Think of how they help you feel gratitude, and so offer them your efforts to be kind to others, to try to love others.

Tell them of a few examples and see that they're very pleased with your efforts.

Next, confess to them times when we disliked someone, when we were unkind to someone.

Recognize that there are times when we do stuff like that, recalling what we know about emptiness and karma.

We recognize how stupid that behavior was.

We're all just going to die, but what goes on with us are those mental seeds, the mental seeds we make through our interaction with others, telling that holy being about it with this sense of healthy regret, helps to damage those seeds.

Then decide upon your antidote.

It could be this meditation, this Tonglen, and decide upon your power of restraint, something you really can do.

Next, rejoice in the fact that you've heard about Tonglen practice.

Rejoice in the fact that you must have enough interest in it to still be coming to classes about it.

Rejoice in any times you tried to use it.

Rejoice in others who use Tonglen. Maybe everybody's doing it, and we just don't know.

Then turn your mind again to that precious holy being.

Recognize that through them, we have access to the entire lineage of teachings of masters.

Ask them all to give us their blessings, to bless us, to grow our Bodhichitta, our big love, so that we can help everyone grow theirs.

Then ask that the teachings stay in our world for as long as they're needed by someone.

Ask that the teachers stay in the world.

Ask that these teachings might spread to any place they have not yet reached before, to help those beings in those places.

Then dedicate just what we've done to taking your Tonglen deeper to your Tonglen practice, awakening your Bodhichitta.

(25:00) Then shift your attention back to your body to check, to see if it needs any adjustment, and then settle it back in, and return your focus of attention to your breath.

Again, turning on the focus, the clarity, the intensity.

Now shift your focus of attention from your breath to my words, listening, and allowing the images to come up for this story to unfold.

Imagine out before you is a huge barren plain that stretches to the horizon in every direction. It's burning hot under a hot desert noontime sun.

You are not in it. You are aware of it.

As you look at it, you see that the ground is actually made of iron, and that iron is getting hotter and hotter under that blasting sun.

It's getting so hot, it's even glowing red.

Then you see random small bursts of flames shooting up from that hot iron ground. 

First just a few here and there, and then more frequently more of them, until there's constantly flames somewhere there.

Then you see, oh my gosh, there's crowds of naked people running across this hot iron through the flames.

They're screaming, their feet are burning.

They're pushing, and shoving, and yelling, and compelled to run. No relief.

Many, many beings.

You are flying above them. Your arms and legs spread wide.

And your love becomes a vast cloud.

Your compassion becomes a vast cloud covering the scene blocking the sun.

Your compassion cloud starts to rain, gentle, soothing rain, cooling rain down on the people, soothing their pain, putting out the flames, cooling the surface.

You see the people calm down.

Your compassion then grows green, cool grass on this ground, making a soft, lovely surface, and your compassion becomes beautiful silk clothing that flutter down from the sky onto each being's body.

They feel that pleasure of the silk against their skin.

They see each other's beautiful outfit.

You then turn your compassion into a big pavilion that protects them all from the sun. 

And so all those beings are now sitting together on this soft green lawn under this beautiful pavilion in their beautiful silk clothing.

They are happy. And so you now come down to the grass in the middle of them.

They see you there. They get up, and they circle you, walking around you three times.

They then sit down with you, and you teach them Tonglen so they can be happy forever.

See them learning from you, eager to put the ideas into practice, wanting to help the others of their world be free from pain and have happiness.

And then do an Act of Truth.

If it's true that I had some small feeling that I really could do this in the future, then may it come true. I swear that by the truth of what we just did, that I will someday be able to actually do it.

Then turn your mind to that precious holy being.

See how happy they are with you.

Know that their guidance is helping you, inspiring you, whether we are aware of it or not.

Ask them to please stay close to continue to help us.

Ask them to help us to be aware of their help, and to continue to ask for it.

And lastly, dedicate this pure holy goodness that we've made to any being who's experiencing a hell realm, that they may get help, that they may get free, and may it be so.

Then bring your attention back to your body, you in your body, in your room.

When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

How and Why Tonglen Works

(38:50) Well, that didn't seem like a Tonglen. We didn't do any breathe in, blast the flame, breathe out. But it did have the taking and the giving, didn't it?

Really, it had the becoming, the being the relief. The being what brings the relief.

Our compassion, wanting to, like, we can't stand even the imagination of that imagery. It's so awful. And so we become a cloud, and then a rain, and then clothing. 

We could have become delicious food and drink.

We could have become beautiful music for them.

Yeah, our imagination is limitless in what our compassion can do for someone who's suffering.

Not only did we give them relief from suffering, we gave them clothing. But of course, we understand that if we don't give them wisdom, they're just going to hurt again in some other way.

So you pop out of a hell realm, and you end up as a hungry ghost. Egads, right? That's not the idea. So we imagine ourselves coming down into the middle of all those beings, and then teaching them this practice, Tonglen practice.

In our imagination, they all go, oh, wow, that's what I've always been waiting for. I'm going to use that forever. Our imagination is limitless.

But then, Sarahni, are you saying your tonglen is just all in your imagination?

So yeah, fun practice. But I've got people in my neighborhood who are hurting. They need a ride to the doctor's office. Don't just sit on your cushion and fantasize that they don't have any pain. Come on, get real. Right?

It's not really that we're saying, do one or the other. Either act worldly or act in your imagination, we can do both. But what we're wanting to get to is the wisdom through which we can recognize that actually, neither one works to help the other.

So that we can understand how and why it is that sometimes worldly things work to help and sometimes they don't. And so that we can understand why it is that our Tonglen that seems to be all in our imagination can actually work, just not in the next moment.

However, the worldly ways we act don't work in the next moment either.

Yes, it does. They get in the car, you turn on the car, you drive them to the doctor's office, they get to the doctor's office. That's happened moment by moment by moment. You are driving, you are getting somewhere.

It seems like what we do in the moment brings what comes next, right?

So we need to go through this understanding of our misunderstanding so that both ways of helping someone worldly or imaginarily, we can understand how they both work and don't work in the same way.

They don't do. They aren't the cause of what comes next, even if they look like they are.

Well, if you can't affect a result in the moment before it, why do anything? Why ever get out of bed? Why ever go to bed? Like why do anything?

So to come to that conclusion is clearly inconsistent with experience, right?

What it is to be an existing being is to do stuff. When we do stuff with an understanding of why we're doing it, we'll understand better that the apparent result is not the actual result. And our reactivity to our effectiveness will get separated. 

Currently, we do something expecting a good result.

We don't ever do something intentionally to get a bad result for ourselves, do we? 

Like everything we try to do is trying to get a good result for ourselves.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

When it works, great, we're so happy with ourselves.

When it doesn't work, mental affliction arises and we blame something about the other.

What if our awareness was such that we were focused on the interaction with the guidance of that interaction being our guidance of kindness, our guidance of love, And all we were interested in was the seed planting? What can I plant in this moment, this moment, this moment? And the circumstances in which we have choices to plant seeds by habit or seeds by wisdom is our interaction with other beings.

Each ripening, each result that we are experiencing is this moment when we get to intentionally plant a new seed. And what happens next is just another opportunity to plant another seed. And what happens next? Another seed. And then next, another seed.

You can see how it gets into that lotus turning mudra, right? Because here it's happening.

Old ignorant me is focused on the result. Wise me is focused on the seed planting.

I seed plant in my worldly interaction with other beings.

I seed plant in my imagination.

My worldly interaction perceptions are limited.

My seed planting in my imagination is unlimited.

They are still seed planting. We've learned somewhere along the way that thought karma is actually the more powerful of thought karma, speech karma, body karma.

I'm not sure. I think we could take that into debate and make the case that speech karma is more powerful, but it has to be motivated by some movement of the mind first. So in that way, we can't make speech or body karma without some movement of the mind.

Our Tonglen practice is helping us plant seeds for a movement of the mind that is more and more and more propelled by love and compassion.

In any experience that we're having—which is always me, other interaction between—instead of our reaction being, how's this affecting me? Which is what our ignorance does. So we all do it. We're learning or gaining the seeds to color that ‚What about me?‘ to ‚What seeds can I plant for happiness for everybody?‘

What pain is blocking happiness in this moment, happiness for everyone involved, not just my happiness. Because my happiness is a reaction to what's going on around me. So we want to be checking our minds reactions to these teachings that are saying, Oh, just Tonglen all the time.

And my mind's reaction still says, yeah, cool, great idea, but it's just imaginary. So I don't think it's as real a tool for helping people. But as we understand better the pen thing, we'll see that it is as real as helping someone tangibly. And we don't have to make the choice between the two. Because we can be Tonglen-ing as we're going through our day, we'll learn, as we're driving the friend to the doctor's office. We're still breathing, we're still thinking, right?

Now, we might be blah, blah, blah, blah, gossiping with them about the neighborhood. And maybe our decision would be, let me concentrate on my driving here, please. Right? Or let them go on, blah, blah, blah. But right in our mind, we're doing this other thing.

To help us deepen our conclusion that, oh, my gosh, I see the power of understanding karma and emptiness is such that I could be Tonglen-ing on every breath. Because I'm already inhaling, so I can be taking stuff. And I'm already exhaling, I can be giving stuff. Because I'm already doing it all the time.

If we have a good reason to grow a new habit, we're more likely to actually grow it. Rather than just being told by some authority figure, Do this. We aren't likely to do it. 

The Pen

(53:05) I know you've all heard this pen story a bazillion times. And it's like, check your mind. Did it just go, Oh no, not again? Or did it say, Oh, let's see what we can learn this time. So hopefully it was the second, but you help me. Okay?

Who wants to teach me the pen thing? Anybody? I'm going to play the devil's advocate. I am not going to believe the party line.

You want to try Frank? Hold up your pen.

(student: I don’t have one.)

Okay, I'll hold up mine. You use my pen. How do we start?

(student: So the first thing I think is what we can see here is, this is a pen or isn't it? So we have the tip. We can write with it. We have the clicker behind it. And so I think everyone would say this is a pen or isn't it?)

So do we agree it's a pen? I agree because I saw it write. It took me seeing it right for me to agree with you this thing is a pen. So that's a factor to remember. It had to function in some way. Okay, so?

(student: So what I learned is, the funny thing when a dog is coming and you give them the pen, maybe he's biting on it, he's chewing on it, and he's making something else. And it means for me the moment where the fly is coming and sitting on the pen, it's more fascinating, because you see the difference that for the fly, it's just a landing base or something. So she does not recognize that this is a pen. She will not write with that because it's not possible. And that means that that is a pen, it's not existing in itself in the thing. So it's just my projection on it, is what I learned or what I would say I made as a baby starting to experiment with the thing. And as baby, I bite also in it. That is a pen. And my parents told me, hey, this is a pen. You can do something with that. And this is a reaction. What is the result of my seeds? As I understood from my past. And so I learned step by step this is a pen, how to use it. This has this functionality. But this is a mistake. So I have to learn to step back and see this is not a pen for itself, or in itself nature is the right word, I think. The funny thing is, as an artist, you can do everything with it. You can say it's a butterfly and let flying through the air or whatever. And this is I think this is the beginning of taking the functionality away and turning it into something else.)

Right, right. Beautifully explained. 

And can we prove it?

What if I were to say, no. Here's the pen, along comes the fly. The fly is sitting on a pen. Come on. My experience is, the fly is sitting on the pen. If the fly sitting on the pen revealed to me the fact that it's not a pen, then when the fly sits on it, I would stop seeing it as a pen, wouldn't I?

Why not, Victor?

(student: Because as an ordinary human being, we still think that it's a pen. I mean, if we don't understand the punchline, we still think that it's a pen.)

Right. That's what I'm saying. Just because a fly lands on it and doesn't see it as a pen, I still see it as a pen. So it has to be a pen. Like my reality is more valid than the fly's reality. That's what you're telling me. You're saying, Sarahni, that your reality is more valid than the fly's reality. Yeah, I am saying that.

And I'm saying that when Sumati and I have a disagreement about where to go for dinner. Same idea. Right? I think my reality is more accurate, and I think it so much so, that I probably don't even bother to think about the other person's reality and maybe it's different than mine. Right? I know that it's different than mine. But there's this thing that's coloring my mind that insists that my reality is more valid or more important or more correct than the other guys.

So I can see it clearly with the fly.

With the dog, if you've ever done the pen thing with people and they say, no, no, the dog is chewing on a pen. And there's nothing we can say to get through. They'll go, yeah, I see. Yeah, I see. Yeah, I see. Yeah, I see. No, they're chewing on a pen.

So what is it about us? Well, I'm going too far.

Why is it? Let me start over. Frank explained that when we see the object as a pen, it's because our mind is forced to see this object as a pen by the ripening result of past seeds that we put into our mind. Great explanation of, let's call it the party line. I don't mean it disrespectfully. It's the explanation for how it can be that I can see this object as a pen and a fly can see it, use it as a landing pad. And there's no contradiction in terms of the identity of this object, because it shows us that the identity of the object depends on who's experiencing it.

So if nobody's experiencing it, like absolutely nobody, then what?

It's like, wait, wait, wait, how do I answer that? But my mind, my wrong mind says, don't be silly. If here's a pen, and I put it on the table, and everybody goes away, there's still a pen on the table, just nobody's experiencing it.

There's still flowers and food and canned goods in the grocery store, even though it's closed, and I'm not there looking at it. Isn't there?

Or does the grocery store only come into being as I drive up and make that left hand turn and there it is. Is it not there until my seeds ripen? Or is it there, but I'm not aware of it being there?

Check your mind. What's it saying? Where's your grocery store? Does it have flowers in it? Ours are to the left when you first walk in.

If what we're saying is that this object and its identity are coming from my mind, then my mind's got to be at the grocery store in order for it to exist.

Does that mean there's just nothing except what's in my field of vision?

Well, yeah, that can't be, can it, Kong-Lee?

It's not like I'm walking through my world creating as I go, is it?

Actually, it is. With highest world view, if we can really live in it, there's nothing until it ripens. There's no thing until it ripens. There's no thing until it ripens, meaning no specific thing. Not nothing.

That word in English, nothing. It's made up of no and thing. But when you say there's nothing here, or there's no thing here, it says something different, doesn't it?

If we call this no thing, it means non-specific, could be anything, according to who's ripening what seed for it.

But then does that mean, oh, so my seeds could ripen and all of a sudden I'd be holding an elephant?

No, there has to be something pen-ish in the thing, right?

Well wait, here's that? Where do we find that? Here or there or here? Where's the pen-ishness in it? If it has pen-ishness, then the fly should experience that if what we're saying is true. Right? That if it's in it, from it, every being would be forced to perceive it in the same way.

Do we even believe that reasoning?

If something's identity were in it from it, the ramification would be every experiencer of it would have to experience it in the same way.

Check your mind. It goes, yeah, that's a logical conclusion, but that's not experience.

Everybody experiences this pen differently. Right now, I'm holding it. You are seeing it. I'm seeing the front of it. You are seeing the back of it. Right?

No, you're seeing the front of it. I'm seeing the back of it. I'll show you the back of it. There.

Oh, whoops.

In all respect, for Geshe Michael, he's done such a beautiful job teaching us the pen thing. And all due respect to us, we have learned like dutiful little puppy dogs to spout it back beautifully. Then, when the drunk driver drives into my car, I blame the drunk driver. Which means I can say the pen thing, but I haven't proved it to myself enough to be able to stop blaming the doorknob turning for opening the door.

What?

So, Frank, does your question, is it still there?

(student: Yeah, I think the example of two try to go to the restaurant and one is saying, this is the right one and the other said this is right one. This would be very interesting to go through it in this way. Because this is much more subtle to get it for my perspective.)

Yeah, good. Well, so then let's do that.

In our case, we have access to two restaurants that we can walk to that are open for dinner, more for lunch, but two for dinner. Well, actually three, but the third one's out because they put lard in their beans. So, we won't go there.

So, there's a Mexican place and there's a Chinese place. In both you can get something vegetarian pretty easily. Sumati loves cheese enchiladas, rice and beans. And I know that that's like clogging heart artery food. Chinese food doesn't have the clogging art artery food, but it has high salt. It has high blood pressure food. But I prefer the high blood pressure for him because I'm concerned about his cholesterol. I prefer the Chinese food for me, but actually it's probably worse for me because I've got a little high blood pressure. However.

Ordinarily, we would have this. He'll say, let's go for Mexican. I'll say, let's go for Chinese. Theoretically, we would argue about it. No, no, honey. Mexican food is bad for you. Chinese food is better for you. Right?

I know what's better for you, because I have a medical background. So, you should listen to what I say and we should go for Chinese food. And if I were to say that to him, which I don't, but if I were, I would expect him to go, oh yes, honey, you are so right. Let's go for Chinese food.

But he probably doesn't. Right? Maybe sometimes he does. And other times he says, or thinks maybe, we always do what you want. Can't we ever do what I want?

I'm just playing here. We don't have those kind of knockheads, but we do go to Mexican food more often than we go to Chinese food.

However, my point is, on the first level, I'm thinking that my decision about where to go is a better one, because I'm thinking of his health. And I'm thinking all he's thinking is of wanting the pleasure of the two cheese enchiladas, rice and beans.

What's wrong with this picture?

There's so many avenues we can look at. Start with just the food itself. Is there really anything in the Mexican food that could clog his arteries?

No. Well, then why doesn't he just eat cheese and ice cream all the time?

(student: If to get the cheese and ice cream, many cows were tortured, isn't it better to not, I mean, isn't there a karmic way in which if you kind of focus on, oh, I'm only going to eat just what I need, not over eat because I don't want to eat more than my share, or take the food out of other people's mouths or whatever. If your intention is to not harm, so you don't need dairy, not just because it's going to hurt me, but because it's going to hurt me and beings. It's not really in the food, right?)

Right, right, right. But to get there, we, we need to understand something about how our perception about the thing came about in the first place, right? Your conclusion is absolutely valid, absolutely correct, based on our already understanding that it's about seed planting, in which case we wouldn't go to either place, right? Because they don't do organic, they don't... So you're right, but we've jumped to a conclusion from where I'm trying to go, right? How I'm trying to get there is the thing, but I've yapped right through our break time. Let's take a break. 

(78:35) Forgive me, Frank, I'm going to leave the restaurant discussion because it's going to take me in a direction that won't lead us to where I need us to go for Tonglen practice. We can do it another time.

Let's go back to our friend, the pen, and we understand that we're using the pen example, first of all, to recognize the no-self-nature nature of the pen of the object. Therefore, coming to understand that that must be true about anything we can experience, our experience of it gives it its identity and function.

As we try to explore that compared to our apparent experience of things, that would walk us through those six flavors of understanding what's meant by dependent origination and emptiness. We're not going to do that now. That's going to come up later next year.

But for this, we've heard the explanation that what makes us see pen and not chew toy is some imprint from our mind that ripens and colors this experience into me seeing pen, me holding pen, using pen to describe emptiness, dependent origination. All of that is this ripening of a series of seeds happening. 

Geshela then gives us this conclusion, all of reality is a result of our kindness. Like the basis of all reality is kindness. And we go, yeah, right. Cool. But have we really proven it to ourselves such that when we are out and amongst that reality born of kindness, we can interact with it in such a way that we can make more and more kindness and less and less selfishness?

Like, is it enough to believe, or do we need to prove it to ourselves?

We want to prove it to ourselves.

And one way to prove it to ourselves is to try it on for size. Alright, I'm going to be kind in the face of the boss.

How long do I have to do it? Until you get a different reaction.

If you try it once and you get a different reaction, maybe you'll go, oh, wow, maybe it's true. And then you try it a second time. If it happens every single time the new way, we might go at some point, Okay, great. This must be so.

But what if you don't yell back and the boss still yells.

You don't yell back and somebody else yells at you.

You don't yell back and you just keep getting the same ick, even though you are acting differently.

If we don't have a really, really clear intellectual understanding, at some point we'll go, I can't do this anymore.

I've had students who caught on so fast, and they were doing their purification practices so powerfully that they were stirring up the crud at the bottom. And the more they purified, their car got broken into, their girlfriend, dumped them, they lost their job. They're being more and more kind and life is getting worse and worse.

They finally came to me and they said, I can't do this anymore. I need a break.

They backed out of classes at Diamond Cutter Sutra. Because it was actually happening and it was too hard. It was a young man and I don't blame him. It just was too hard.

But in fact, he was so powerful and I think he landed on his feet. And once you know the pen thing, you can't really unknow.

But let's see if we can dig into why it must be the case that if this pen is coming from my mind, I must choose kindness.

Not because somebody else said so, but because I showed myself something. And based on this, this, this, and this, my conclusion is, oh, love, compassion. Selfishness will kill any happiness.

Instead of wait, no, what about me? Right? What about me? Is Mr. Ignorance talking. 

How might we get there from it's my mind, I know it's my seeds ripening?

How do we prove it to ourselves what it means for my seeds ripening?

How did those seeds get in there?

By what we think, say, and do towards others. Is that what Kong-Lee said?

(student: We give pen to others before, we plant.)

Yeah. Does anyone have a pen? I do. (Demonstrating giving pen) Imprint made in the mind. Does anyone have a pen? I do. Wow.

Because seeds grow. Even still, why does it work like that?

(student: Emptiness.)

Emptiness. Yeah, you're right. That is why it can work that way.

(student: Because I cared that others have what they want. If they want a pen, I cared and I did what I can do to give them what they wanted. And that's why I have it.)

Right.

So to have it comes from having given it in the past, given something similar. 

But why? Like, why isn't it I have pens now because I've used pens before, so I know pens?

That's not the cause. To have a pen and use a pen is a result. Right?

To have a pen and use a pen is a result.

Do results just come out of the blue, out of nothing?

(student: We give it to someone else before.)

Right. The result has to have a cause.

(student: Yeah, yeah. Because we plant a pen before. So this is the cause. And then the result is that you can use a pen to write or you can do anything with it.)

Yeah. So the pen is the result. But isn't the cause of the pen the fact that I know this particular pen we went to see the lawyer for our will and stuff, and they gave us this pen. So we spent I don't know, what do you spend at a lawyer? We spent a thousand dollars. We got this pen for a thousand dollars and we got our will for free. Yeah.

So isn't the cause for the pen the going to the attorney's office, or buying it from the store?

No.

Well, but without doing that, I wouldn't have this pen.

Having the pen is a result.

What do we know about causes for the result?

Not just causes in general, but what do we know about the causes for this pen? And don't skip to Kong-Lee‘s conclusion quite yet.

What would we have to know about when the cause happened in order to have this result now of this pen now?

Did the cause for this pen now, did it happen the moment before? (Students shaking their heads)

Why not?

(student: The pen had to be produced. The pen had to be produced before I can use it.)

Right. It takes time for a cause to become a result, doesn't it?

You can't have a cause and a result at the same moment because they'd be the same thing.

So the pen as the result is not also its own cause. Write that one off.

Results don't come out of nothing. Write that one off.

Does it come from itself? Does the pen make its own cause so to be its result?

Why not?

It needs the pen factory, right? And the pen factory needed somebody to think of the pen factory, and have the resources to build a pen factory, and to have the plastic to make the pen. Blah, blah, blah.

What's the actual cause of the pen? Even worldly, we can't actually find it. Because everything keeps going, yeah, but that depends on something else.

Sorry, I distracted myself.

(91:38) We're trying to work out the cause of a current experience.

We've said it doesn't come from nothing.

It doesn't come in the same moment.

It doesn't come from the thing—that's saying the same thing.

Does it come from something else? Yeah.

What do we think it comes from something else? The pen factory.

Well, what part of the pen factory? OK, it doesn't come from something else in that way. Worldly way.

Does it come from something else in another way? Kong-Lee just said, no, I agree with her. But we need to work our way there.

If we apply the party line, we say this pen comes about as a result of my seeds ripening. My seeds ripening is not the pen, it makes the pen. So aren't my seeds ripening this experience the pen something other than the pen?

So the pen does come from something other? It comes from my seeds.

But that's not correct either, actually. Because that says there is an object here that receives my seeds, that then makes it the object that is.

Well, wait, that's what Geshela says. Chocolate sauce makes the sundae. There has to be the vanilla ice cream there.

But what he means by vanilla ice cream there is the emptiness of the object that receives the seeds ripening. But even that's not completely accurate, because until my seeds make this pen, there's no emptiness of the pen either. Until my seeds make the chocolate sundae, even though there's chocolate over here and ice cream over there, you don't have a sundae until the two come together.

But the two never come together, right? My seeds ripen and voila, there's the pen. 

And if my seeds ripening include my pen, my favorite pen, my special pen, don't you touch my pen unless I say you can, then that's the relationship I make with this experience.

Where I'm trying to get is to recognize this explanation, the seeds coming out of my mind make the identity is cause and effect explained. It's the actual, the accurate cause effect relationship that's happening that makes us me and my world.

Within that is all worldly cause and effect. But the actual cause for worldly cause and effect to work or not is this results of causes made by what made by what? Made by our behavior choices.

Why behavior? Because the real causes for any result is our experience of it.

How we are forced to experience something is the cause of everything we experience.

How we are forced to experience something is a result of how we perceived ourselves doing towards other,.

The cause of everything is what we perceived ourselves doing towards another.

So all of a sudden, this thing we call ‚my behavior‘, my behavior is the word we use for how I interact with others.

How I interact with others is my seeds being imprinted.

How I experience others interacting with me is my seeds ex-printed.

I just like that word because we get the opposite idea. Every experience I have is a result. Whose result? My result of causes this mind made.

So I point to me. It looks like I'm pointing to my body, which implies my personality, et cetera. But what I mean is the subject side in this subject side‘s subject-object-interaction between experience that's happening technically 65 per instant.

Our experience-ing is always results.

How we interact with those experiences makes causes.

Can you have causes bring about the results in their next moment? No.

Can the causes be the result? No.

Can you have a result without a cause? No.

So everything comes from causes and the only causes things come from are made by how I perceive myself interact with others, because I am the subject side.

Are we following?

Can my subject side come from your subject side? No. Because you're the object for me.

Can my subject side ever mix with your subject side? No. Because it would be an experience. And my experience has to always be subject-object-interaction between, because that's how it's always been imprinted.

So it's always going to be ex-printed with subject-object-interaction between.

Even as Buddha, Buddha's omniscient, and they still experience subjects-objects and interactions between. But they don't experience them as three independently existing things.

So if my, I'm going to call it this subject side instead of my subject side. If this subject side is always the one that has to be there to make the imprint, it's always going to be there to experience the result.

So I'm the only one that can experience the results of what this subject side is aware of itself doing to other, because that seed is planted with this as the subject side.

Subjects can never mix because your subject side is an object for me.

Does that then become clear why it is that not even a Buddha can take our karma?

Because we are the seeds we plant. When we say karma, mental seeds, that's an explanation for cause result, the actual cause result.

What I imprint becomes my experience, my result.

The cause I make becomes the result I experience.

And there's no other way anything can happen to us. Only by way of this ripening subject-object-interaction between.

If I'm the only one, the subject side is always the subject side, is the only one that can make karma for me. Meaning I'm the only one who can plant seeds in this mind, because I'm the only one who's got it, right? I'm the subject site.

That means I'm the one who has to experience the results of those causes. Nobody else.

And that's true for every subject side.

Does that make it more clear why this subject side, because it wants to be happy, would come to the conclusion, well, then I want to be as kind as I can be because I want to be happy.

It's not selfish to say that. But it needs to be this deep conclusion, Oh, I see why my kindness—meaning my love and compassion—is what my default would be if I really understood that I am this process we call karma.

If I really were able to identify that as my reality, I would not be able to say something nasty, like any more than I could take a hammer and pound my own toe with it right now. If we really understood this. I'm not saying I'm there at all. But as we go through this deeper explanation of results from causes, we show ourselves that love and compassion is the cause of happiness. Even when we do something exceptionally loving for somebody else and they get upset.

I've had that happen, and my wrong worldview reasserts itself. Oh, that was stupid. I won't do that for them again. Right?

When my right worldview would say, Where am I doing that to others? Where am I giving a bad result to somebody who's tried to be kind?

My example is in college, we would go visit my parents one weekend a month. And when I was there, I would clean my mother's kitchen for her. It's not that it was so dirty, but I knew she didn't like cleaning. So I'd give it a deep clean. And she was like, wow, thank you so much.

We went to visit David's parents one time, and his mom was out doing volunteer work, so I thought, I'll just clean your kitchen. Oh my gosh. I don't think we ever got over that. She was so insulted. I was flabbergasted that she was upset. That just wasn't on my radar screen at all. She was hurt and I was hurt. And I just tried to do something nice.

Then I turned around and David used to like to buy me earrings. It's like, how many pairs of earrings do you need? And it's like, oh, thank you, honey. And I wouldn't go, oh, wow, thank you so much. I was like, come on, quit buying me earrings, is what I was thinking. I was smart enough to not say it, but he felt it.

So what should I have done? Faked it? Why didn't I just say, honey, thank you so much. I have plenty of earrings.

But it gave him such pleasure to buy earrings. It's like my own mental afflictions.

It's human that our love and compassion has a limit.

I love you, I'll do this for you, but that person I don't trust. That person looks downright dangerous.

I'm not saying walk into dangerous places and be loving and you won't get hurt, because we might get hurt. But it's not because we showed love. It's because of some past seed planted where we were willing to be unkind.

Ripenings are happening. Seed planting is happening. There's that delay between the seeds that we're planting and the ripening that we're experiencing.

When we can separate these two with some amount of clarity, the actual next thing that happens after what we've just planted, we'll just see as, Great. Now let's plant this. Great. Now let's plant that. As opposed to, How many more seeds do I have to plant to get the result that I want? Do you see our limitation?

The four stepping is beautiful.

Clearly identify what you want.

Find the person that wants something similar.

Go and figure out together how you're going to get the thing you want.

Be happy that you went and helped the other.

So suppose I want a tall blonde with blue eyes. And then you go help the other find their partner. And in the process you bump into a dumpy guy with black hair. And you don't give him the time of day because he's not blonde and blue eyed. Your result's going to be blonde and blue eyed. So ditch everybody out.

But you know what? That one who's got black hair and black eyes you just bumped into—your perfect partner. Right? And you just said they don't match my expectation. 

That's like what we're doing when we're going through our world saying, I understand about seeds. And I've been being kind so I expect you to be nice to me.

We're limiting. We're only using our wisdom halfway.

Yes clarify what you want. So that we can know what kind of behavior to plant. And then just plant, plant, plant, plant, plant. Forget the result. The result's actually going to be way bigger and way better than that specific thing that you planted that you wanted—if you let it.

The dumpy black haired guy would have been a more amazing partner than the blonde you hold out for is the theory.

Why Tonglen?

So where does Tonglen practice fit into all of that?

When we understand plant, plant, plant, what I want to plant is kindness, kindness in the face of suffering, kindness in the face of happiness, I just want to plant seeds for a world where everybody's happy.

My seed planting now may or may not ripen as the person happy, or feeling better, or relieved. But I'm going to keep planting because the result I'm experiencing now is result of seeds I planted before I knew. And now I know.

So again, why do Tonglen?

(student: We're planting the right seeds, I think.)

Yeah, we're motivated by caring about somebody's suffering, even in the face of situations where we can't do anything worldly. Which technically is every situation, right? Which means don't not try, but don't try with no expectation of the result.

Well, wait, if I have no expectation of the result, how do I know what to try?

We have vows. We have those vowed behaviors.

What do I try? Giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, having a good time. Yeah?

So again, why do Tonglen?

We notice suffering. Even my worldly ways of helping are going to only help temporarily. How wonderful it would be if when I help them in a worldly way, the seeds I'm planting in my mind would be such that the ripening result of that would sooner or later be their ultimate happiness.

There's no physical way we can help to bring that about. But there's a mental way we help bring that about, which is what we're doing when we Tonglen.

When we imagine, I'm going to take all that pain and all the seeds for more pain. And I'm going to destroy them, and with destroying them, I'm going to destroy my own misunderstanding, my own ignorance, my own selfishness—which is the real cause for their pain, isn't it?

If there's pain I can see in my world, whose result is that? Mine.

What about the pain they are experiencing? Whose result is that? Theirs.

The pain I see them with is my seeds. The pain they have is their seeds.

I don't know what pain they have or don't have, actually. All I know is my results.

And so if it's true that I am growing my personal responsibility to take away suffering, and so I need to become Buddha to be able to do that, then I want to try to take away any suffering I see in my world, knowing it's my seeds ripening.

Well, wait then, does that mean I want to see a lot of suffering so that I can Tonglen it, so that I can destroy it, so I can stop seeing it?

Do I have to see suffering to ripen those seeds?

No, but without seeing suffering, is my compassion going to grow big enough?

If I go through blinders and refuse to see suffering in my world, it means I don't have compassion. I'm not willing to feel that feeling.

Compassion is kind of painful, isn't it? To see somebody's pain and it's like, oh.

To see somebody's pain and respond with, if I could take it from them, if I could take their karma, I would in a minute.

We can't take theirs, but we can use it to destroy the karma we have for seeing it (suck it in), and then my love says, what could I give them?

I can imagine even raining rain down upon the hot house and cooling it up. There's no limit to what we can do in our imagination, and we are planting seeds so we can grow our loving compassion bigger in our imagination.

And we use our experiences of our outer world to trigger the story of the Tonglen that we do.

We don't expect that our Tonglen-ing our friend's broken ribs today means they're going to call me tomorrow and say my ribs are healed.

It could happen, but it actually—I was going to say it doesn't matter whether it happens or not, and I don't mean that in a cold way—but I mean what matters is the seed planting. The ripening will take care of itself because it's such a pure practice to think if I could imagine taking all their pain away, destroying my own selfishness and giving them all kinds of good. That is such a radical idea that it is like earthquakes in our refrigerator.

Every seed that's in there that's been colored with my own selfishness gets a little shook up every time we Tonglen. So we're trying to make the case to Tonglen become our default response to our interaction with others—not just when we're upset. But when things are going well as well.

To suck in the misunderstanding of thinking what's going on now is the source of the pleasure we're all experiencing. It's no, it's that in the past we shared pleasure with others, so we're experiencing pleasure now. Let's share more.

How do I do that? I can Tonglen. Right?

So Tonglen doesn't work. Turning doorknobs doesn't work. And so both can work if we have the karmic goodness to get the result we intended for when we do our deed.

How do we create that karmic goodness?

Tonglen, right? Want to take people's pain, want to give them happiness. Do it on the breath, on our cushion, off our cushion. Yay.

End of class.

So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. Hopefully we understand a little more deeply how it is that we can and will someday stop their suffering forever by way of trying to help them do it. We plant the seeds to actually do it by way of teaching them how to do it. And that's a great, great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone…

Dedication

So thank you so much.

(student: Actually, just now, I was thinking something. Before that, I show you this big pen. I purposely bought it when I want to talk about the pen. Okay, just now when teacher was explaining the mentally when we want to Tonglen, because this is one of the way we plant it, isn't it? So my thinking, instead of thinking bad, so might as well we think good, so I think then to me, when we have the thought, and then in a way that, like somebody else will feel it. I don't know how to explain it. Like if let's say you have a good heart, or you're spreading a positive frequency, and then somebody else might feel it. So in a way that it is doing good. Also, I mean, to me, so why you want to do Tonglen. And another thing is that, because like teachers say that, whatever we see, it is our seed also. So that's why when we doing this one, we are trying to clear our seed. But if let's say we clear our seed, so in a way that the person either he's getting better, or he won't be, our view. So I think that's why we want to do Tonglen is, you know, this is the only way like, you know, we want to plant good seed. So because you're not going to say, I mean, going to think bad so because you're saying this one, so to me, so there's quite a lot of reason why we can do it.)

Nice summary. Anything else from anyone else?

(student: You're talking about the pain and compassion.When we have compassion, there is pain also inside. Is this a reason why we try to avoid having compassion?)

Generally, I know that's why I avoid it. It's hard, right? It hurts to see suffering that I can't do anything about. I don't think Buddhas hurt, right? Buddhas don't suffer from their compassion doesn't make them suffer. But at my level, compassion isn't. So it's a heart opening practice to be willing to write to look to witness doesn't mean you have to put yourself someplace that's painful, but just to be willing to notice somebody's pain. And then actually even allow yourself to notice someone's pain and not feel like you have to fix them, or do something for them in the moment. Right? Someone with chronic pain probably doesn't want to hear you say, have you tried blah, blah, blah. Right? Probably what would give them more comfort is, well, that must be hard to live with that, and they'd feel seen and validated and heard. And they'd feel a little better even if their pain is still at a level 10. And that would be compassionate.

(student: Yeah, makes sense. Because we know that no one can take the pain from us.

Exactly. Right. Nice.

Welcome back. We are Tonglen practice module. I think this is our 7th class. It's November 28th, 2025 this is Friday morning. Then we meet again on Monday morning, and that'll be our last class for this practice module is on Monday.

Let's gather our minds as we usually do. We'll do our opening prayers and then go right into the meditation for this class. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again, please.

[Class Opening]

Meditation: Tonglen-ing a Neutral Person

(8:40) For this session of Tonglen, we're going to use a neutral person as our Tonglen object. What we mean by neutral is someone that we encounter or have encountered more than once, but we don't really know them other than in this capacity in which we encounter them. Like the bus driver on route number 7, or the grocery clerk, you recognize their face, but that's about all we know about them.

So we don't have a particular attraction or fondness. We don't have a particular aversion.

As our Bodhicitta is growing, probably we would be saying, well, there isn't anybody I don't feel a little bit fond of, because everybody's suffering and everybody is an object of my care and concern, and so we could say there aren't any neutral people. But there are people where we know and know what struggles they have in life. And then there are other people that we think we know and we don't like. And then there are those that are in the middle.

Think for a minute and pick somebody, this neutral person.

Got one? Okay.

So let's settle our bodies in for meditation. We'll do our preliminaries first.

When you have that body set so it can just stay still, bring your attention to your breath, focusing on those sensations at your nostrils, adjusting your focus, your brightness, and the intensity, the fascination or curiosity.

We'll use 10 breaths.

Now intentionally shift that focus from the breath to thinking of your refuge, our understanding of emptiness, such that we choose our behavior more carefully.

Think about how that is protection.

Shift to our growing Bodhichitta. One way is to think of maybe the way our societies, the people of our communities, what they choose for entertainment. And maybe those things aren't so wholesome and yet they seem to give some pleasure.

We think of the seeds that are being planted and recognize we're going for pleasure in things through which we plant seeds that will bring us more suffering, and we don't understand that.

Maybe it seems like divisiveness is growing and everybody seems to be struggling and not trusting anyone else.

It's sad because we see the people around us perpetuating their unhappiness in their very efforts to get some happiness. And we recognize, we are doing the same.

But we've gained a glimpse of how that's all born by a misunderstanding.

And when we understand our misunderstanding, we can at least make some effort to stop perpetuating that mistake.

We wish so much that everybody we know would just have a glimpse of how things could be different.

Let our hearts open to this big mistake so we can grow the ability to stop making it ourselves and help others stop making it in the process. Bodhichitta.

Then turn your mind again to that precious holy being that you've called to you.

See them there. So beautiful. So happy. So radiant in their love and their wisdom.

They used to perceive themselves as an ordinary being.

We believe that now they perceive themselves as a fully enlightened being.

Think of their good qualities.

Think of how they had to learn and then change their own behavior and all the goodness that they must have done to reach this state of their own enlightenment.

Feel your admiration for them.

Feel your aspiration to do the same, to become like them.

Feel your gratitude for all that they've done for us so far.

And show them a sign of respect so that our own minds see ourselves humbling ourselves before them, recognizing that they have a secret to our happiness, and we are asking to receive it.

Next, make them an offering, both out of a sense of gratitude and out of a sense of making a sincere request to receive more from them.

You might include in your offering the Tonglen that you've been doing over the last few weeks.

See how happy they are with you.

Then clean out some specific negative seeds that you know you have inside.

Tell them the situation.

Recall karma and emptiness and so grow your regret.

Establish your antidote and your power of restraint and fill that space in your heart that you've cleaned out with rejoicing.

Tell them of some kindness that you did recently because of what they've taught.

Tell them of some goodness you saw another one do and find another, maybe some change in our outer world that we're seeing things going in a better direction.

See your holy being so happy that you are seeing yourself share with them these intentionally made kindnesses.

Then ask them to please, please continue to teach you, guide you, inspire you—both in formal teachings and in the informal ones that come about that look like challenges, situations with others that push us to choose our behavior more intentionally.

Then ask them to please stay close if they are in a physical manifestation for you. 

Pray for their long and healthy life.

Ask them to bless you with the long life of your Dharma family and your Dharma center, whether it's an online group or a physical place.

Dedicate what we've done just so far to your own Bodhichitta growing so big that all there are in your world are beings that you are fond of.

Then turn your mind back to check your physical body to see if it needs adjustment. 

Then settle it back in. Bring your attention to your breath to settle the mind.

And then turn that focus of attention onto that neutral person.

See them in the circumstance in which you usually encounter them as if they are there right now, whether they are or not.

Imagine you are there before them in that invisible you.

Recognize that you don't have a particular fondness or aversion to them, and recognize we really don't know anything about them, and so we need to pay a little closer attention.

Does it appear that their physical body is tired or hurting?

Does it appear that they're a little short-tempered today?

Just by watching them over a short period of time.

We can imagine putting ourselves in their shoes and we can think, what might they be feeling? What might they be experiencing?

I'm using the grocery store cashier. She's been on her feet all day. I imagine her feet hurt and she's tired and eager to get home. So maybe feeling a little cranky and experiencing customers that are impatient.

I don't really know, but I can try by paying attention.

Settle on some form of distress that you feel you are perceiving in them.

Feel in your heart, I really wish I could help them.

I wish something I could say would take her feet pain away, that some interaction could give her greater patience.

Identify this distress. Think that she probably has seeds in her mind for more of it.

Make the determination, just by the power of my growing love, I will try to take this from her.

You focus on that being and it's as if it gives you x-ray vision. You can see that black yuck flowing around inside.

By your focus of attention, all that black goo turns and flows towards the middle of their chest, forming up into that tight little ball that we will be able to take from them. 

We'll use 10 breaths to gather that distress, all the story about it, all the seeds for more of it.

When we have it in that tight little ball, we shift to our intention: Now I can take it from them. I will try. And we turn our focus of attention to our exhales.

Use 10 breaths for your exhale to reach, going into them and hooking into that little black ball. And then 10 more to pull that black ball, identifying it, up and out of them to come hover underneath your nostrils.

So 10 breaths to get it, 10 breaths to bring it back.

Now we have that black ball of their distress hovering right in front of our face. Recognize again what's in that black ball of goo, and recognize any distress I can see in my world is my own seeds.

So leave the black ball there, look into the middle of our own chest.

And we see that tiny little red flame, the flame of our own self cherishing, self grasping, meaning our belief that me and other are separate.

And so therefore me is most important, to get what me wants to avoid what me doesn't want. And as a result of that, this mistaken me has created the behaviors that makes me see that distress in my world.

So my willingness to take that pain from them, through that willingness, I can use their black ball of distress to destroy my misunderstanding. And I'm going to do it.

So you set yourself up and then you know what to do.

Long exhale, then long inhale, watching that black ball go down.

So when you're ready.

You see the flash when they're suffering in your ignorance is obliterated. Rest breathing normally in that freedom, that absence, that Bodhichitta.

Then turn your attention again to that other person.

See that they're feeling this amazing relief.

Their mood is suddenly so bright and happy.

They feel so confident that they can handle life.

And even the people around them feel this shift in them.

Notice how you feel towards them now.

Is it the same as when we started? Just a neutral person? Or is our fondness for them growing a little bit?

Then we think, this is lovely to have helped them get relief from their pain.

Now I'd like to give them anything that might help them get even happier.

And that very thought becomes this beautiful white glow inside your very being, the glow of your love. It flows out with every exhale, this white glittery light that goes a little closer to that other being with each exhale.

And as it reaches them, it spreads and flows down over and around the outside of them, forming this beautiful light of protection.

And some of it is drawn in with their own inhales, where it goes in and it fills the inside of their body with that same white light of love.

If it was foot pain we took from them, this white light heals their feet.

It becomes the perfect pair of shoes for them.

And it becomes a glimpse into the wisdom of helping others in the same way that we want help.

This continued light that we continue to share on our exhales.

Continue to give them the things that would help them be safe in their world, things that would help their life be easier.

Material things are fine, but go on to giving them insights into where those material things actually come from.

Give them insight into where happiness actually comes from, and see them getting happier and happier until everyone they encounter feels like that person loves them so much.

Then your invisible-you recognizes, all right, my job is done here.

You can bring your awareness back into your this-you turning your attention to that precious holy being.

See them so happy with you.

Feel your gratitude to them and dedicate this Tonglen practice to helping beings come to know what it is to love and be loved.

Then be aware of your physical body in your room.

And when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

Good job. Now it's 45 minutes.

Review

(51:45) We can see that there's really no limit to what we can take and what we can give when we're doing it in our imagination, in our fantasy. I still, when I hear myself say, in our fantasy, a part of my mind says, well, then it's not real. It's not really going to be the case that when I see that lady the next time, she'll just be different than she was before. But that's my mind's own belief in things having their identities and qualities in them, from them, that makes me still think that.

We're going to explore a little bit more about how Tonglen works and how it doesn't work. But let's do a little review.

Where does Tonglen fit in the Lam Rim? Who remembers?

(student: Bodhichitta)

Growing our Bodhichitta.

Where is it in the Lam Rim that we grow our Bodhichitta?

(student: Lojong?)

Lojong practices are how we do it.

Does it come right after we meet the holy Lama? Maybe, like the first thing Geshe Michael ever does is the pen. But, typically when we get our renunciation and we know we need help and we find somebody to help, the first thing they say is, Get the essence of your life.

How do I do that? Recognize your own impermanence. We could be dead 4 minutes from now.

Then what happens? Either down, maybe up, maybe same thing, but probably worse rebirth than what we have. E-gads, what can I do about it? Refuge. Refuge in karma and emptiness.

We learn about karma mostly, not so much emptiness. And at this level, they say, our concern is still our self concern. How do I stop my suffering?

As humans, our physical bodies have evolved with that default mechanism for safety. And so it's like, ‚What about me?‘ is meant to keep us safe in the world so that we can keep our progeny safe in the world. Because somehow that passing on our DNA is primary. It's like, I don't think I'm human. But regardless, the protect me is so deep. 

From that level, as we're growing our renunciation and our understanding of karma, it is natural and human nature to be thinking, how do I stop my suffering? Because if we don't recognize we have suffering and we go, Oh no, just everybody else's suffering is what I care about—we really are like hiding something, hiding from ourselves. It's not selfish to recognize this life, it's just broken, and to aspire to stop perpetuating a broken world, a broken life. We call that aspiration wanting to reach Nirvana, the end of our own mental afflictions forever.

Then after probably many lifetimes of working at that level, we have the extraordinary circumstances to have the seeds coming to the surface of, yeah, yeah, I get that my pain is terrible. And now somehow I'm recognizing that, Oh my gosh, other people feel it too. We always knew it, but it just didn't quite sink in, because our distress was so much bigger, even when it really may or may not have been, our self-concern was so strong. But then as we're working with the karma to reach Nirvana, our goodness is growing. We are avoiding harming others to reach Nirvana.

In that avoiding harming others, we're getting more keenly aware of how it is that we do harm others, and how others harm us, and how others harm others. We're recognizing, man, you can change that cycle.

So at some point, our renunciation starts to shift to others, and we probably get this sense of overwhelm, but there are so many others. There's just me, right? How can I ever do it? But that's the start of our growing Bodhichitta.

It's at that point where we're shifting from, maybe I need a higher goal than just my own freedom from pain. I need that ability to know what others need to give up and take up in order to help them stop their suffering, because I will still be suffering if I reach Nirvana—which is freedom from suffering—but I still live in a world where other people haven't done it yet. Not just other human people, but any kind of conscious being.

At some point, our heart starts to open, and that's where Tonglen practice comes in.

If we're not ready to shift from the Hinayana level to the Mahayana level, and we were to go to a teaching where the teacher says, pretend you can take people's pain and give them happiness. We'd go, that's nuts. I'm out of here.

But when our seeds are starting to bubble up and we hear a teaching like that, it's like, wow, deep down, I always knew it. And we're attracted to it. That attraction allows us to try it on for size. And as we try it on for size, we plant the seeds in our minds to see our ability to interact with others shift from the constant ,How are they impacting me?‘ to a more ‚How am I impacting them?‘ 

Can my words be more gentle or can I just stay quiet? Or could I offer some gentle advice? How can my just being in their presence be a little bit uplifting for them?

Our Tonglen practice helps us grow that heightening sense of our impact that we have, that we have always had actually. But when our impact has been from selfish, the impact is they're doing the same thing presumably. It's a little like rubbing. Even with people we love. When our mind is that way, there's a little bit of friction. Always.

We can imagine this heart change where we don't have this me that needs protection so much, and so we're willing to say this friction is unnecessary. I'm going to let it be. I don't need to fix it. I don't need to stop it. I can be in it and radiate this loving concern.

Our own selfish seeds will reach a level, a bar at some point, where up it'll come again. What about me? I'm not being authentic. I'm putting their needs ahead of mine all the time. And it's like, yes, but if we are resentful as we are doing that, then we're misunderstanding.

I was in health care for a long time and I would see the caretakers of the parent with, usually it was a dementia. And the caretaker, they're spending their whole life looking after this person and they do it because they love the person. But they were exhausted. They were coming to me exhausted and short-tempered, and it's like, well, how can you get a bad result from doing such a good thing, taking care of your parent? But when our state of mind is still colored with our ordinary point of view, then there's this underlying resentment—not anybody's fault, just the ignorance.

And then that task of taking care of the parent is seen as an effort and a chore at some point. And when it doesn't go well, and the parent blames you for stuff, it's hard. It's hard to keep that up and not feel it in the body.

So it's such a difficult situation and, and it's born of this deep, deep, deep misunderstanding that isn't anybody's fault, right? The exhausted caregiver, I couldn't say, look, you're exhausted because you're resentful. Like they would have said, thank you very much. I'm out of here. Because it really, it's only true because we misunderstand and we misunderstand because we are here samsaric beings.

So it's like, oh my gosh, the gratitude to past me’s for doing whatever they did to get me to the place where I can learn these things and recognize, oh, it's all that my own resentment of trying to be kind to everybody when deep down, I just wanted to be selfish, slob me. That's why my body was so tired. But even just to come to that realization doesn't make it go away, because those seeds have been planted, right? And we work with it and work with it, and then it's like, well, what kind of worldly thing is going to help me get over my deep-seated selfishness?

There's no worldly thing that can do it. But without the worldly things, we can't do it either, right? The worldly others through which I interact, through which I see me, me's trying to get the upper hand here, versus the me that we're wanting to transform into love, this love.

We're not trying to get rid of our me, that's impossible. We're learning how to transform the seeds, how to plant seeds for that me that is—all-inclusive? Does that make sense?

The me that understands me's relationship to other and interaction between.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Where does Tonglen come in our practice?

In that growing our Bodhichitta, which shifts us from Hinayana-level practitioners, I want to reach Nirvana, to Mahayana-level practitioners, I need Nirvana plus omniscience. And the way I reach that is by growing my loving compassion and my personal responsibility.

Does that mean once we get Bodhichitta, we can stop Tonglen-ing?

We wouldn't want to. Yeah, you probably could, but why would we? If that was how we made this shift from not Bodhichitta to Bodhichitta, we will keep Tonglen-ing.

Last class, we'll talk about all day Tonglen, and even Tonglen through what we call dying, so that we can grow this sense of Tonglen-ing all the time.

(break)

How Tonglen Works and Doesn‘t Work

(72:57) Consider Tonglen works because whatever we imagine comes true. Right?

You're saying Tonglen doesn't work, Joana?

No, you didn't say that either.

So you're saying it is true that anything I imagine comes true in the next moment.

No. But what I imagine will come true?

Yeah, good. Not really.

Whatever we imagine, plant seeds, and those seeds grow. And when they ripen, they'll ripen into something similar to what we imagined, but not identical, because the seeds have grown, right?

They've been influenced by other things that we've imagined and not imagined. So even when we are imagining, I want a pony that's white and brown and has a black tail. We imagine it really, really clearly.

Suppose the little kid's imagining that pony, and then one day dad brings home a little blonde pony, you know, with a pale tail, and the little kid says, this is not my pony. Thank you very much, but no. My pony needs to be brown and white with a black tail. 

Then dad goes, okay, sorry, no pony for you. Because the kid has said this one or not any.

We kind of do that with our four-stepping, right? Plan out what you want. Be as specific as you can. But that's only in order to clearly identify what seeds to plant.

It's not then meant to say, look for that result. Because if you're focusing on getting that result and it shows up over here looking like this, you disregard this.

The seeds that we plant, the result's going to be bigger and better.

When we plant good seeds, the results are going to be bigger and better than what we imagined. Which when we're talking Tonglen, it's like, wow, because we're deciding to Tonglen, to imagine that we know another's suffering. Those seeds are going to grow into actually knowing other's suffering.

Wait a minute, do I really want to do that? It's enough to know my own suffering. I don't really want to know yours. But as Buddhas, we will not just know, we will know other's suffering directly, what they need to give up and what they need to take up. 

That means knowing. We won't suffer from it. That's another story, another class.

Making this determination, we're in Tonglen, we are identifying another's suffering, we're planting seeds.

Then we're also planting the seeds of caring enough to try to do something about it, even in our imagination. At some point we'll go, well, especially in our imagination, because anything we do to help them stop their pain worldly-wise, which seem more concrete and where we have the opportunity to help, actually are so limited. They're temporary.

Yes, we can feed somebody. And yes, we can feed them every day for the rest of our life. They still are hungry a few hours later. So like, in a way, what's the point of doing worldly things? If I can sit and Tonglen, and I can take their hunger away, and I can take their poverty away.

Well, because it doesn't take it away in material life, yet. That word ‚eventually‘, where we started out, it's important. But it seems like a cop-out to say, my Tonglen's going to work eventually, so I'll keep at it.

But there's nothing worldly that does work even eventually, except for the suffering that goes on to work to finally wake us up. There must be something wrong with this picture.

We Tonglen planting seeds to know their sufferings.

We Tonglen to plant the seeds to care enough to try to do something.

We can influence them by changing our seeds, just by trying to help them in worldly ways, and by trying to help them in our fantasy ways.

When we do see them changing, when we see our world changing, it's a result of the change in the mental seeds that we've created by this growing wish to know how they're suffering and to want to do something about it.

So Tonglen does work, and we could even make the case that by Tonglen-ing the things we do in our worldly ways to help those people, they will work better too. Because as we make the good seeds of wanting to end their suffering and bring them happiness, those good seeds and help our feeding them a meal can help them recognize where it is that their abundance comes from. Maybe we don't even have to sit them down and teach them about it, because our karmic seeds are shifting, that there are beings around us that have this wisdom—and there are.

Tonglen is fantasy, and it's a fantasy in which we can plant seeds in ways that we can't plant in what we call non-fantasy—as if our worldly life is somehow more real than our fantasy life.

When we grab the doorknob, turn it and pull, it's a fantasy that what I just did opened the door. No, no, that's real, that's concrete.

But what I do in the moment doesn't bring the result in the next moment, does it? Because if so, every time I did this with my hand on the doorknob, the door would open and it doesn't happen.

Or we could say, well, what part of this experience actually opens the door?

I have to turn the doorknob. Yeah, but I have to touch the doorknob in order to turn the doorknob. So is it touching the doorknob that's the trigger? Well, I have to be at the doorknob, right? We can keep going down. What is it that really opens the door? 

Until we realize it's like, well, I can't find the thing that actually opens the door. But my goodness, I just opened the door. Magic.

Can I stand in front of the door and tonglen somebody and get the door to open?

No, that doesn't work either. Worldly things don't work by what we do in the moment, and Tonglen doesn't work by what we do in the moment. And so both of them can work because they're planting seeds in our minds.

We can open the door with Bodhichitta in our mind, in our heart, and opening the door will become a cause for our Buddhahood. To grow that kind of Bodhichitta, we Tonglen. We practice this wish, any suffering I see, I wish I could just suck it in, use it to destroy all my seeds of seeing that suffering. Poof, it's all gone. Give them worldly happiness so they have the circumstances to learn wisdom, happiness. And when we go in retreat and we don't have any distractions that we need to run off to do, you can sit on your cushion and you can Tonglen somebody, taking them through all of the ACI realizations, all of the Diamond Way realizations, until that person is teaching everybody in their world, because our fantasy story is unlimited and it's so fun.

There are so many beings to do that it's like, to me, going into a solitary retreat, I can do so much more for my world than I can in a worldly life when I've got these apparently worldly obligations that distract me.

Tonglen does not work directly and neither does anything else that we do. Everything works by way of the seeds that we plant in our minds as we perceive ourselves thinking, doing, saying towards who or what we perceive as other.

Those seeds grow and other things we think, do, say, either add to them or subtract from them. This whole process of seeds growing in their power until they get over some threshold, I don't quite understand, and poof, they then make their result. 

Imagine what our Tonglen results will look like as they start ripening. Oh my gosh, you knew exactly what was on somebody's mind. I mean, you didn't sit there and know that you knew it. It's just that what you said, they go, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I needed to hear. Really? Great. Results of Tonglen.

We get into a situation of conflict. We expect our own triggers to be pushed and son of a gun, they don't. Results of our Tonglen.

These seeds will grow. They will change our perception of us that changes our perception of our outer world.

(student: So, just to reflect that the thinking or the understanding is correct. So, the first thing is, I totally underline that Tonglen is working because it's not fantasy, in my mind it's more a prediction of a future behavior I will have. So, when I Tonglen to this neutral person today, for example, this grocery man or was it? Yeah, yeah. And I took this one and I don't know him, but when I have Tonglen him, I make him very special for me and he's very positive, loaded. And the next time I will see him, I will react as a friendly person to him. Maybe. And then he will also react in the same thing. And this is something it's for me totally clear that this works. But is this the right understanding of it? How it works?)

Yes.

(student: So, then it's totally natural.)

Totally natural. Exactly. When we're really getting this nice aha, it's like, oh my gosh, how did I miss that for 50 years of my life or I don't know. I was in my 40s when I first met it. It's like, oh my gosh, that's so obvious. But then I have to admit, it's like, then I got involved in other things with the practices and Tonglen slipped down to the baseline. And really, it's like all the other practices that we learn, they've been bringing us to Tonglen, and then if we get more advanced practices, they're all based on Tonglen. So, technically speaking, Tonglen can be your lifetime practice. But recognizing that in the same way that hand on the doorknob isn't really what's opening the door, the Tonglen isn't really what's changing the situation. It's the seeds being planted by doing the Tonglen. And that's such a subtle difference, but important to understand.

So that I won't stand in front of the grocery clerk Tonglen-ing and expect her to stop yelling at me. Maybe she will, maybe she won't. But the fact that I Tonglen-ed while she was yelling at me, says that I will be less likely to yell at somebody else in the future, and I am less likely to react badly when somebody yells at me. And when I don't react badly when somebody yells at me, that's when I'm burning off upset seeds, burning off the negativity, the burning off the perpetuating of the yelling.

So Tonglen does help—not in the moment. But it's what to do in the moment, as long as you are in a physically safe space.

Yes, it's true that you can Tonglen the mugger as he's coming at you. But if we expect my tonglening the mugger will make them stop and hug me instead, we might be disappointed.

But if we really understand, it's like maybe we'd get to the point where it's like, no, I won't be disappointed at all, because I'm still Tonglen-ing, as they're doing whatever they're doing, trying to take care of them, even as they're hurting me. We learn that Bodhisattvas will try to prevent the other person from hurting the other person, me, but do so in a way that doesn't hurt them first.

Old worldview is, hurt the person who's trying to hurt somebody else, because that's how you stop them. And that's how we perpetuate people hurting people. But… I got distracted.

Our Tonglen in the moment doesn't bring its result in the next moment in the same way that nothing else does either. We have the goodness for it to seem like what we do in the moment brings the next thing in the moment most of the time. But it doesn't make it be like that. 

Our Tonglen practice can make it so that it seems like our Tonglen practice works in the next moment. But what's working in the next moment is ripening seeds from past Tonglen-ing in the same way that whatever we do in our worldly way, that seems to work in the next moment is ripening seeds from having helped somebody else somehow do something in the next moment effectively. Thank goodness we have those seeds, or it's like turning doorknobs wouldn't work more often than they don't. Turning keys to start cars wouldn't work as often as they do. Thank goodness we have good seeds.

Tonglen helps us make more of those good seeds, because it's a pleasure when things seem to work. But it's a dirty good pleasure because it reinforces our misunderstanding of how things do and don't work. So it actually might be better for our spiritual growth if half the time the door doesn't open when you turn the knob and half the time it does. It's like what's wrong with this picture? We would finally start to question. Anyway, I'm not wishing that on anybody.

Tonglen is something we're doing in our imagination and it's such a radical shift from what we ordinarily do either worldly or in our imagination that that contributes to its power.

If we have not seen emptiness directly yet, then all of the seeds that we are planting are colored with the belief that there's a me with my own identity that interacts with the you with your own identity and what I do towards you now brings what I experience next. Those are happening, right? Planted 65 per instant they say, which means the ripening of previously such planted seeds have that same belief within them—we understand that—perpetuating our own misunderstanding through our interaction or we experience something. By experiencing it, we have a response, a reaction to it and we've already planted new seeds, and then those seeds contribute, we plant new ones. So we're ripening and planting.

The state of mind that chooses to Tonglen is based upon this understanding of mental seeds and the mistake of the things as identities in them. To do Tonglen because of that understanding is so different than our usual reaction response to a given situation. It's so radical, is what I'm trying to get at, that the seeds that are planted by doing Tonglen instead of usual reaction serve to negate a little bit the strength of the ignorance as the new seeds are being planted.

If we plant new seeds with our ignorance a little bit grayer than when it's full on, they're adding less to the ignorance aspect of all our previous seeds.

Just as an analogy, let's consider that all the seeds that we've planted, you know, good ones and negative ones, they all have a little black speck in them, which is the black speck of our belief in self-existent me. When our belief in self-existent me is full on, like every speck is black and it just stays, every seed has that black speck.

Black specks in newly planted seeds feed the black specks in previously planted seeds and it keeps them black, black, black. They're even growing actually, black, bigger black.

But then we plant some seeds where the black isn't black anymore, it's gray. Which to Tonglen, pretend you can take that person's suffering, pretend you can give them all your happiness. What? Are you nuts? That's black speck. Oh yeah, cool idea. Gray speck.

Then to actually do it, we're adding gray, we're not adding black. So all our other black specks are getting a little less black, because we haven't added to them. And we keep adding gray, gray, gray. The black ones are getting less, less, less black. Do you see where it's going?

Until we see emptiness directly, we're still adding gray, even with our Tonglen practice. But it's getting less and less and less gray, so the black that was in there before is not being added to as much.

That Tonglen will take us, it will feed us towards our direct perception where we finally don't believe in black anymore. So we can't plant any new black or gray, even as we experience things that way.

(student: Yeah, this was a little bit my suspicion for them, what I said. So in which, what is the situation where I not see emptiness in making Tonglen? Oh, it was a little bit hard explained. So when I do Tonglen, and how is it working without emptiness? And how is it working with emptiness?)

Right. Once we've seen emptiness directly, and we still Tonglen, then it's even more powerful. Because it's not that we're just knocking out the black stuff. We are adding white seeds, we are adding white seeds, powerful white seeds. So our 

Tonglen practice will get all that more powerfully affecting our own seeds to Tonglen after we've seen emptiness directly, which we will continue to do

So when we're Tonglen-ing, if somebody didn't know anything about karma and emptiness, and they got an instruction on Tonglen, and they go, wow, cool, I'm going to do that—it would still be useful for them.

When we know that the reason we're doing Tonglen is because we're doing it to plant seeds, because we understand that that's how we create the identity of things. It is an informed Tonglen practice. Every seed planted has that included in it. So our Tonglen practice will be more powerfully effective on our own mind.  To set ourselves up going into it, I'm doing tonglen because I understand about karma and emptiness.

Then once we see the black ball touch the flame, and they obliterate each other, and the wisp of smoke and blood, you can use that to sit for a short moment in what will it be like when my ignorance is actually destroyed. Imagine yourself in that all availability or the potentiality or the absence of self-existence of all things.

Whatever your highest concept of self-existence—all gone. For those few moments right after you've obliterated everything, imagine that you're sitting in the direct perception of emptiness there. It won't be it, probably, but someday it could be it, because we've been planting seeds. Which also then says, well wait, I plant seeds in my mind by way of what I see myself do for others. Well then maybe as part of this like long version of Tonglen for somebody else, Tonglen them right into their own direct perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta in their heart. Give them in your imagination that realization experience. Why not? We plant the seeds.

Those seeds will be growing. Yeah, but I've been doing it for embarrassing 30 years, and that experience hasn't happened to me yet. Yeah, you remember the word ‚eventually‘, what we fantasize about will eventually come true—that and something better. Because until we've had direct perception, our imagination of what we're giving the other person, it won't be quite right. But those seeds will grow. The not quite right will grow too, but leave that part. It will grow into the actual experience.

So yay, it's like there's nothing else to do but Tonglen. It's so sweet.

But we heard that about other practices as well.

(104:50) Tonglen does not work directly. I already said that. And neither does anything else. So by doing Tonglen, we are saying to our own minds, I believe in karma and emptiness enough to do this practice so that I can reach the state where I can teach and guide everyone in how to reach this state of ultimate happiness in which we teach and guide everyone to reach this ultimate state, in which they teach everyone to reach this ultimate state, in which they teach… you can never stop saying it. And it's like, well, then does that mean there's always a time when there's somebody that doesn't get it so that those who have gotten it always have something to do? It really is one of those conundrums. 

They say that there are a finite number of consciousnesses in all of existence and that by way of one of them reaching their ultimate state, their totally awakened state, Buddha, That means eventually every single one will do so too.

But then then what happens?

If reaching our ultimate state is not self-existent, then it means we will need to perpetuate ourselves in that ultimate state. It's not like once we reach Buddha, we become self-existent Buddha and we will stay that way forever.

We know ourselves to be blank, seeds ripening, seeds planting process happening. Our compassion continues to perpetuate the seed planting that's ripening as Buddha, me and Buddha paradise emanating.

So don't we always need somebody to emanate to, to help?

Does that mean there'll never be the end of somebody's suffering? 

I don't know the answer. I'm still cooking that one.

They say, Buddhas in Buddha paradise are always doing Mahayana Dharma. I don't know. We're all enlightened beings and we sit around teaching the pen. Really? Is that enough to perpetuate our Buddhahood? Don't we have to perpetuate stopping suffering? I don't know. Think about it.

It brings up that topic called the why and the how.

The how of things are the worldly reasons we give for the experiences that we have and that we see other people have.

The how of opening the door is to grab the knob and turn it and pull. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

But the why of things is always karmic seeds planted by some similar behavior towards another, now ripening in my experience, that happening to me. And even in that happening to me is the misunderstanding that there's a me here, independent of the that, so that that and me can interact in that way that is my experience. That misunderstanding is being perpetuated by the experiencing it that way.

When we Tonglen, we're saying to ourselves, I'm understanding the mistake in some way. And I'm going to intentionally plant seeds that are not agreeing with that mistake by seeing myself suck away somebody else's pain, because I understand it's my seeds ripening to see them in that way. I'm going to use it to destroy my own misunderstanding, thinking I have my nature independent of how others experience me. And I'm going to use that freedom from that mistake to give that other all kinds of happiness worldly, all the way up to ultimate. Our own mind is watching us do it. It is getting recorded with those seeds. And they're so different than our standard automatic selfish me seeds that it causes earthquakes in Buddha paradise, they say. Because it's like, wow, finally somebody got off automatic selfish pilot and did a little Tonglen. It is that powerful a practice, even when it feels so simple, even puny sometimes.

That process of understanding mental seeds and then thereby choosing our behavior towards an other based on what we want to plant, versus what we want to experience in the next moment, is called using the perfection of wisdom.

To understand that when we are working on our perfection of giving, we are working at a seeds‘ level… lost my train of thought there.

To choose our behaviors differently because we understand about mental seeds is this radical shift in our seed planting that is stopping adding to all the previously planted ignorant seeds that we have.

Geshela gave the example of, suppose we're applying for a green card—in the United States, the ability to live and work in the United States. You need to give them all this information, and one piece of information you think, Ooh, if I give them that information, it's probably going to disqualify me. So you decide there's no way they can ever know about that. So I'm just gonna say this one thing that isn't quite right.

We're willing to lie to get the green card.

Suppose we get the green card, Geshela said, we think, see? That lie didn't matter. In fact, probably it helped. And we go on about our career.

Then sometime later, maybe it's years later, it seems like, gosh, people don't believe what I say anymore. I can't seem to trust what people say to me.

I go to the grocery store, the fruit looks really delicious, but I get it home and it's rotten. Like even the fruit in the grocery store lies to me.

We don't go, gosh, maybe that was a wrong idea to lie on my green card, because now it's coming back to me as being lied to, and that's unpleasant.

We don't know that. As non-practitioners, we don't know that. So instead we'd be blaming everybody else. What's the matter with you that you don't believe me? Stop lying to me. You know, and the other person's going, lying to you? Like, I'm not lying to you. But those seeds planted have grown, and they're coloring our perception of our world.

To be in that position, you know, as a person trying to practice their six perfections, their perfection of wisdom, they go, whoa, I caught myself being inclined to fib on my green card. I just, I mustn't do it. I mustn't do it. I'm going to put down the truth.

We can do that as an act of truth, actually.

I wanted to lie. I know other people who have lied and it's worked for them. But I'm not willing to do that because I understand it can only bring me a bad result, whether I get my green card or not.

So you put down what you need to put down, and then maybe your green card gets denied. You have your wisdom choice again. Old me would say, well, that was stupid. I could have lied. Or wisdom me goes, okay, I'm not supposed to get it. I'm supposed to do something else.

It was more important to me to hold to my integrity, my wisdom integrity, than it is to get that green card, as important as getting the green card was to you, your family, to everybody. It's like swimming upstream to be able to hold our wisdom, our growing wisdom as our priority in our decision-making.

In the end, everybody benefits.

In the next moment and the next day and the next week, it may not look that way.

So if in doing so, you upset your whole family, you could have lied to get your green card. Why did you do that? Now we're all in this precarious position.

See how hard it can be to swim upstream? No, my dears. I love you so much. I could not compromise all of our integrity to get that green card. And if I had our life around that green card would have gone sour anyway.

You're nuts dad. They'll be mad.

There's this story, this family, the areas in a famine and the dad and the kids and the mom, they're walking along this road and they see this lump of meat. I think it's cooked. It's like, whoa, food. And the dad looks at it and he thinks to himself, we can cut this up and feed each other and it'll last us another day. I could grab the whole thing for myself and it would sustain me long enough that I can get to the next place and procure grain to make flour. I can save my family if I take the whole thing and run.

He decides to do it. He grabs it and runs away. Imagine what the family's thinking. 

And it sustains him and he gets some place and I don't know, he saves the day, he comes back with food and he saves the family's life.

He says, I knew I had to do that to save your life. But in the period of time between when he ran away and when he got back, they are hating him, aren't they?

But his wisdom was such that he was willing to do that because he knew he would save them as a result. Like high level Bodhisattva dad here. Not me, dad. Because I wouldn't know for sure whether I'd ever get to the place where I could save them. But if I knew that, the willingness to swim upstream. It's hard.

It's not saying sign up as a Bodhisattva and you have to do that. It won't probably be as drastic as that example.

But in little ways, our decisions that we make seem to upset people because they are not what people expect us to do. And so our task is to do them skillfully and carefully and gently and lovingly and still do them.

Tonglen is a tool that helps us negotiate that stuff. Because we can Tonglen our upset person. We can Tonglen ourselves seeing an upset person, because we're living by integrity. We can Tonglen all that stuff, and help negotiate our seeds a little better.

We're done.

Does Tonglen work?

Yes. As well as anything else works.

Does it work in the moment? Not yet.

Will it eventually? Yes.

Cool.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share.

Welcome back. We are the Tonglen practice module group. This is our class 8, the final class for this practice module. It's December 1, 2025.

We'll do our opening prayers, and then I'll yak a bit, and we'll do our meditation at the end. So let's gather our as we usually do, please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

(8:40) Last class, we were doing Tonglen on someone we don't know, right?

We recognize their face, but we don't really know. It was kind of hard to decide what suffering will I take from them, because I don't know them well enough.

The instruction was simply observe, and based on our own human experience, we can interpret what we see and recognize, wow, they walk like their knees hurt or their facial expression looks like they're a little annoyed with something, or they look tired.

We understand, we don't know what they're experiencing. Actually, we understand that we don't know what anybody's experiencing, right?

We're always in that mode of interpreting. However, we learn to do that, we're doing it all the time. And we recognize through the power of the teachings that all of our awarenesses and beliefs about what we know about another person are unique to us. And they're valid, and hopefully most of the times we are close to correct.

But just as we know that nobody can really experience things from behind my eyes and in my shoes, because me is me and you is you, and never the two will mix.

It gives us this glimpse of the reason to grow our compassion, is that we don't really know where somebody is coming from, why they're acting the way they seem to be acting. What are their hopes and fears? We really can't know.

We know from our own side that the reason we might end up saying something hurtful, or doing something rude, is because we were upset by something, or we just weren't paying close enough attention, or there was some upset that propelled that particular behavior.

When we understand it about ourselves, if we'll just stop and give ourselves the time and space to consider, well, when somebody's behaving badly towards me or towards another, maybe they have some underlying stuff also that is contributing to their behavior in this way.

I don't mean to say that makes harmful behavior okay, because they're hurting. Not at all. Harmful behavior begets harmful behavior. Both oneself doing more, the one who's doing the harmful behavior will do more if they don't recognize there are unpleasant consequences to it. But also in the sense of seeing more of it in our outer world as well, and seeing more of whatever the underlying upset is that propels our behavior that's harmful. We know that that's happening from our own side, and so we know that it's happening from another side when we see or are aware of others behaving badly.

To be able to look underneath and say, ah, you know, they're suffering in this way that makes them behave like that, and even underneath that further, oh my gosh, they misunderstand the world. They must misunderstand the world, or they wouldn't behave like that because they would know they've just shot themselves in the foot.

In their effort to solve a problem or to get happy in which they thought their harmful behavior could bring them that result, they might as well have a hammer and they're just doing this on their foot. Why am I hurting so badly?

To know that, and to know that they aren't aware of that, hopefully it makes our heart go, oh, I'm so sorry. I wish I could just get them to realize. I wish I could get them to wake up. I wish I could take the hammer out of their hand.

It isn't necessarily automatic that every being has that kind of reaction to someone who's suffering. The fact that we're attracted to these teachings says we are the kind of people that have that kind of reaction. We hear the teaching about ‘we reap what we sow’, and it goes deeper. It's like, oh, if that's true for me, it's true for everybody. And then how helpful it is to know that even at the beginning, when we can't really quite put it into practice well yet, it's like, whoa, just the understanding that how I'm influencing my future by what I do now, it gives me a power. It gives me a strength. Because it's a strength over my own self, my own behavior. And it says, you're right, you can't control anything outside of yourself. We can barely control our own behavior. But that's the only place where our effort to control can actually pay off. Anywhere else, it's going to fail. 

Back to our premise, we were Tonglen-ing someone we really don't know what their suffering is. If we perceive them as a being in the desire realm, our realm, then we know that they have obvious suffering–not all day long, hopefully, now and then.

They have the suffering of change–pleasant things that wear out, leaving them wanting for more.

And they have pervasive suffering. The pervasive suffering of being on their way to dying the instant they're conceived, not knowing that. And so, not using the opportunity to get the most out of their life. But also, pervasive suffering is that underlying misunderstanding of how things work, how things happen, so that we are in this constant not knowing what could happen next. The pervasive suffering has this underlying theme of we don't know what karma is going to come next. We don't know what's in our karmic pocket, for sure, and at any moment, poof. We just don't know.

We learn to sublimate that. Because if it were up front, close, we would all be wiped out with anxiety, we'd be unable to function. People get that kind of anxiety and depression from this inability to cope with the randomness of life. The fact that we try to do this and it's not effective, and we try to do that and it's not effective.

I mean, my life has not been like that. But I know people, or I know of people, don't actually know people, who have that kind of life. They get so anxious that they can't even function. That becomes the obvious suffering. But it's based on this pervasive suffering that is worse when we don't understand that it's these seeds ripening from seeds planted, and it's happening constantly.

As we grow more and more aware, we understand more and more that our influence upon ourselves and our world lies in our interactions with others. Because it's through our interaction with others that we plant those seeds, make those imprints that become the experience of the others that we interact with.

When we're in this position with others that we don't know well enough to know what to Tonglen, and we just pay close attention to them, whatever we witness that seems not happy, peaceful, calm, pleasurable, is the level that we would Tonglen them of.

The key is being willing to pay close enough attention to see, are their hands shaking? Maybe they're nervous about something. What's the expression on their face? 

We don't actually have to get it right according to their experience. We actually can't get it right according to their experience. Even if we had the opportunity to sit down with them and say, tell me,what's the problem?

We've all done that. We've tried to explain a problem to somebody else, and we just can't verbalize it well. But when we're the ones paying attention, trying, trying, trying to understand, whatever level we perceive, that's the level to Tonglen.

Again, recall that our Tonglening practice is about growing our Bodhichitta. Our Bodhichitta is that love, compassion, that wants to help them end their suffering, so that I can become a fully enlightened being, so that I can help them become a fully enlightened being.

And, Bodhichitta is that direct perception of emptiness that gives us the wisdom to understand that the system, to know that the system we've been taught, (I’m) trying to get the right words, does explain where happiness comes from.

So, where am I going? Any suffering that we can perceive in our experience, outside of us, apparently outside of us, is this opportunity for us to plant seeds for our own Buddhahood, so that we can help that other in that deep and ultimate way.

In order to reach Buddhahood, we have to want to reach Buddhahood, and then we choose to do the kinds of behaviors that clean out the imprints in our minds that were made from before we knew any better, and to put in imprints in our mind that can grow into the ripening experience of moving along the path of realizations, to that transformation of how we perceive ourselves.

So, we are, apparently, I can only speak for myself, I am perceiving myself as being a being with a body made of flesh and blood and organs, and a mind made of all my past experiences, with a belief in a me that's me, that has pain, obvious, of change, and pervasive. That perception of myself is nothing but a constant series of ripenings made by past behaviors, in which I perceived myself in that way, interacting with others, conscious being others and material thing others, with the belief that those two had their own identities and qualities in them, from them.

The perception of ourselves as enlightened being will be no more or less real than my perception, our perception of ourselves as ordinary suffering beings now. Our experience of ourself now is ripening results of past deeds. Our Buddha, me and Buddha paradise emanating will be ripening results of past deeds also.

That tells us that our true nature is not what we think it is as an ordinary being. That in fact, our true nature is the availability to be whatever that seed ripening happening is at the moment, from which we interact with other again, and plant new seeds.

So, this empty nature–my nothing but nature–is what is the promise actually, that says collect the right imprints. When those imprints ripen, I will be forced to perceive this being with a body made of light, made of love, made of compassion, a being made of wisdom, itself experiencing pleasure, more pleasure, more pleasure, and spontaneously, effortlessly emanating, being what any being needs to wake up to the same truth about themselves and their world.

How long will that take? It doesn't matter. By the time we're Buddha, time is part of the constant ripening.

(29:08) Back to ordinary me, trying to use this understanding to burn off my experience that are colored with the misunderstanding and plant imprints into this mind with the new understanding in order to grow my ability to use my awareness of other beings’ suffering in order to propel my own awareness towards that state of heart that knows directly what every being needs to take up.

I need to plant seeds in my mind for trying to help others stop their suffering and gain happiness in order to have the seeds in my mind to reach that ultimate state myself. From that ultimate state, I can more directly help others reach their ultimate happiness too. So, without others, I can't transform myself into me in Buddha paradise emanating to those others.

We need other beings. We actually need to be aware of their suffering.

That's a little harsh. Like, are you saying I'm making others suffer so that I can benefit from it, so that I can become a Buddha, so that I can help them stop suffering?

If it was under my willpower, I'd just stop projecting them from suffering. I'd just project them all as Buddhas already.

I tried. It doesn't work. We can't do it by willpower. We could, if we had the seeds to do it by willpower. I guess I don't have the seeds to do it by willpower because I've tried

So, any suffering that we can be aware of is an opportunity for us to plant the seeds for our own Buddhahood so that we can really help others. Understanding that, hopefully it means our willingness to be aware, even maybe be in the presence of others' suffering will grow.

Our tendency is to put blinders on, to avoid really being willing to witness someone's suffering because we can't do anything about it. Even if we can do something about it, we see that whatever we do is temporary.

Yes, we help them get their broken leg fixed, but then they have a heart attack.

Yes, we help them get the new job, but they're still unhappy with their teenager.

It's just like it's always something, and it's true for us as well. It's always something. 

Doing Tonglen is helping us grow our Bodhichitta. To grow our Bodhichitta, being aware of others' suffering and feeling, I wish I could do something. I wish I could reach into them and just take that all away from them. If you have kids, you've felt that, I'm sure. 

Those of us without kids have felt it in other ways. Maybe with our pets, because a pet gets injured or ill, you can't explain to them, honey, you have strep throat, you'll get your antibiotics. In 12 to 24 hours, you'll be feeling better. You can't say that to your dog, I don't think, and help them go, okay, thanks, mom. I'll not worry about myself.

Our willingness to witness and be with somebody else's distress, by Tonglen practice, it gives us this tool and this confidence that allows us to allow our compassion, to grow bigger, instead of seeing our compassion as an emotion that hurts, that we then want to avoid. Because maybe we can do something worldly to help, maybe we can't, but we can always do Tonglen.

But come on, Tonglen is just fantasy. You can't Tonglen somebody's broken leg and in the next minute have it be fixed. Or in the next minute have it be casted and them on crutches. Our Tonglen, come on, it's just fantasy.

We've learned in the last couple of weeks that real life is just fantasy too, in the sense that there's nothing other than seeds ripening and seeds planting happening called real life, called fantasy, called Tonglen, called movie, the ‘everything is projected’ reality.

On our practice of the path, one of the effects that we're working on is this understanding, deepening understanding of what we mean when we say, oh, that's my projection.

When we're first learning about karmic seeds and this thing called projections, we learn about it, the projection knowing the projection reveals to us the illusory nature of our appearing reality. It's like, well, illusory nature means we think something's there, but it's not really there. We see water in the desert and, oh, it's a mirage. The water's an illusion. There's not water there.

We see a snake in the garden and we jump back and then we look again and it's like, oh, it was just a coiled up piece of rope. Ah, that snake was an illusion. It wasn't real. 

But then the drunk driver hits our car and somebody says, oh yeah, that's just your projection. And our mind goes, that was no illusion. My car is wrecked. My neck hurts. That was no illusion.

It shows us that when we think projection and illusion, we think somehow not real. When we understand that nothing has ever had its own identity or own qualities, that that's impossible–not just illusory, but impossible. So that when we come to use the word projection, our automatic reaction is, oh, that's how it's real. That's what's going on.

Even after all these years, I hear my mind say, that's a projection. And I feel it go over to the, oh, so it's not real. What we're trying to grow is this deep reaction to the term projection, my seeds ripening, and have our automatic reaction be, oh, that's real. That's real. The drunk driver hitting my car from my seeds ripening, my past carelessness happening, happened—it didn't, I'm making it up. That's real. That's what really happened and is happening. Does that mean I say to the drunk driver, no worries, my seeds ripening, you're not responsible.

Does that help the drunk driver? No. So if we said, oh, drunk driver didn't really happen, that wouldn't help either. When we blame the drunk driver for hitting my car, and so I want that drunk driver reprimanded in some way, because it was all their fault–that doesn't help either.

Somewhere in there, we're growing our understanding of what projection really means. In doing so, we're growing our awareness of how it is that things have always been.

When we understand this karma and emptiness process happening moment by moment, and when we come to see it directly, we realize–not that we've now changed things from having had their own natures to now they don't–we've realized, made real for us, that things with their own natures have never been there. And now we are finally experiencing our world accurate to the way it actually happens and exists by projection, and so real. In them, from them–not real. iIn them, from them is also projected, which is why it appears so real.

(student: So sorry, sorry for interrupting you. I asked myself, how does it work that I can switch on and off the news on a TV or whatever, and I see all the sufferings that are coming every time, war, crime, hurricanes, catastrophes, whatever, and so on. And I can switch it on and off so instantly. How does it work? Or what does it tell about my perception in this case?)

Right. The ability to turn it on and off is seeds ripening from having given others the opportunity to have choice as to what they see or don't see, or what they become aware of or not aware of. So if that's a good thing, to be able to have that ability to turn it on and off, then it's result of some kind of similar kindness in the past. Which says, if that's a good result, and you want to continue to have that opportunity, we would want to be aware of places where we are interfering with someone's opportunity to turn something on or off. It wouldn't literally have to be the TV set. It could be some other opportunity where they have the choice to change things.

Do we interfere with other people's opportunities to change things? If we find, oh, I'm doing it there, we might decide, I want to change that habit, because when that ripens on me, I will not have the ability to turn my opportunity on or off. And it's like, what could that look like? I could always turn on my TV set. I don't know. Maybe not. Or maybe it's a whole different way that it manifests for us. Maybe we're, I don't know, in a situation where somebody else has control over the radio, and they're blaring their propaganda stuff on you constantly. It happens in places. And you've got to listen to that blaring noise constantly, you can't turn it off.

So seeds, everything is seeds, at every level. And we can see then how they say that the direct workings of karma is deeply hidden reality, meaning a level of reality that can only be perceived by an omniscient mind. Emptiness directly is easier to perceive than the direct workings of karma–meaning the specific, what did I do to create that background? Every little blip of blue versus the other blue has a seed that was planted. And to know directly, oh, that life when I did that thing, is the cause of this, only omniscience knows it. But we can learn the principle well enough that we can make these correlations. If that's pleasant, then I shared some kind of pleasant visual with somebody in the past. If I like pleasant visual, I want to continue to share pleasant visual. Simple as that. To get more specific, we look at our 10 virtues, non-virtues, we look at the behaviors that have become vowed behaviors to see what that omniscient being has recommended for us to avoid. And then you turn those around as positives. It gives us a clue of what kinds of things to train in as humans based on what an omniscient mind has tried to give us as guidelines.

Again, how does Tonglen fit into that?

It's a tool that we can use to plant seeds in our mind, because we're doing it motivated with that intention to shift our own seeds, to grow our love, compassion and wisdom, so that we can in fact, someday, know directly what that other really does need to take up and give up in order to stop their suffering–the suffering at the moment, and the suffering ultimately.

We understand that our Tonglen does not work in the moment. And our growing understanding is neither does anything worldly that we do work to give what happens next in the next moment. But it seems like what we do worldly brings what comes about next. It looks like you put your hand on the doorknob, you turn and pull, and the door opens. That seems like this deed, that deed, that deed, that result. And every time it seems to work, we reinforce our belief that it worked sequentially like that. It works and it works and it works and it works until it doesn't. There's one time you put your hand on the knob, you try to turn for whatever reason, and it doesn't open. And our mind automatically goes, what happened? The door jams swell, there's something wrong with the lock. We grasp at the reason for why the this, the this, the that, to that result didn't work. When in fact, it never worked like that. And all of a sudden, we have one experience that is the opportunity to show us that it never worked like we thought. And instead of going, oh, what was I thinking?–we make up a reason for why it didn't work in the old way so we can cling to our familiar belief.

As humans, we cling to familiarity, even those rare ones that like change. They still like change in a certain way, some familiarity with it. It has to do with our physicality. Our seeds that ripen our beliefs in this physical body that's a material body that has evolved over time and has struggled with survival. All of this is projected reality also. And our belief in it colors us in such a way that we are hardwired, we perceive ourselves as being hardwired for protection, based on evolution.

Our brains run our sensory apparatus such that we are in constant awareness of, Is this dangerous or not? All colored by the mistake and running the show as the… What is it? The app underneath, right? The app that's running behind everything else is part of being human mammal, is to have this hardwiring of safety first. Which is, it's a good thing, right? If we didn't have it, we'd walk right out in front of cars. We wouldn't pay enough attention to not eat spoiled food. We would do all kinds of stupid things if we weren't constantly aware of this danger.

Why am I going there? I forget.

It's part of our automatic pilot that we're learning to get off of as spiritual practitioners on a path that's driven by this heartfelt, deep understanding that suffering is unnecessary. Any kind of suffering is a result of a big mistake. And when we understand it that way, it's like, all we have to do is stop the mistake. Technically, all we have to do is stop our own mistake.

How do I stop the mistake? Do I give up on my outer world and go isolate myself into retreat? That won't stop the mistake if we don't do significant work on ourselves while we are isolated. Then we don't really know whether we've fully stopped the mistake until we get ourselves back out into interaction with others and see what's happened to our responses.

Our habitual pattern is to experience something and react to it. And the reaction plants new seeds. The situation's finished. It's been burned off, those seeds are gone. Our reaction to it has planted a whole series of new seeds. Meanwhile, other seeds are ripening that we are reacting to, and the reaction is colored by this automatic pilot–safe, not safe. How do I get safe? How do I stay safe? My behavior is driven by that. We might call it the ‘what about me’ color. So that our reaction comes out of this perception, They're yelling at me. If I yell back louder, I get the upper hand that makes me safe. We think that's the right thing to do,and they actually expect us to do that. We're trying to get off that automatic pilot, and instead of reacting, we're training ourselves to take this pause, just enough of a pause to choose our action.

Maybe we choose to yell back. It's still different than automatic pilot.

Maybe we pause and choose to say something kind, but we still yell. Okay, we get credit for the trying. We plant seeds for the trying. We plant seeds for the still yelling.

Maybe our ability grows further, and instead of acting from the impulse to yell, we don't act from that impulse, we choose a different reaction. I'm sorry you're upset with me. How can I help you? Maybe they get madder. Maybe it shocks them and they go, what? And the situation stopped. Maybe it's anywhere in between.

Our own mind is the important thing watching. Because our own mind, in a sense, goes, whoa, that was different.

What happens next, however, if we go, how can I help you? And they get madder still. Our mind's going to go, well, that was stupid. You should have yelled back. And it's like, oh, nuts. Because I was trying to use a little wisdom, and I was expecting I would get a nice result in the next moment, in the same way that I expect the door to open because I turned the knob.

So in order to grow our ability to be in respond instead of react mode, we also are learning to disconnect from what comes next as a result of what I just did mode. 

And that's very difficult.

Again, why am I talking about this in view of Tonglen?

Because we are training to open our willingness to witness people's distress. Then we find ourselves in the situation where I can't really do anything for them, and so we reinforce, just don't pay attention then.

But now we have this tool. I can always Tonglen. I can always fantasize that I could just reach in and take away their distress. I can do that fantasy in such a way that it can be more effective at changing the seeds in my own heart that are actually the source of the distress that I see in them anyway.

Because the reason the door opens when I turn the knob and pull is because of some kindness seeds related to allowing somebody to pass by. Let's just call it door opening for door opening. The reason my seeds are ripening, I can open the door today is because I helped somebody open doors before.

When I'm understanding that better and better, each time my hand goes to the door knob, my mind might be saying, wow, let's see if it works this time. Because we'd be wondering. And then it's like, wow, cool. And through the door I go. As opposed to this automatic pilot, of course, the door is going to open.

Same with our Tonglen.

We don't expect the Tonglen… We Tonglen the tired business person on his way home after a long day, and he's just looking dejected. We do some Tonglen, and all of a sudden he's brightened up, he's happy, he's being nice to everybody. We don't expect that. Because we know, my seeds, I'm just doing this in my own mind. I don't expect it to help him.

But the reason we're doing it is that we know it will help him.

How?

By changing my seeds.

I'm never going to see that guy again, probably. So I can't say, well, I remember when I Tonglen-ed him on March 20th, and now in February, the next year, there's he a happy guy. I'm not ever going to know that until I'm Buddha. And then maybe I will know that. And then I'll probably also know that my mind stream and that mind stream had had some kind of similar interaction many times before, so that one Tonglen wasn't the thing that did it.

What I'm trying to get across is that when we say, oh, my Tonglen is just fantasy, what we call my real life is also just fantasy, because they are both seed planting, seed ripening happening and nothing but. So our Tonglen practice is as effective, maybe more so, as being the one who calls 911 in the face of the accident.

You Tonglen-ing whoever's involved in that accident is probably more powerful. Is more powerful, I will take away the ‘probably’.

But does that mean you don't also dial 911? No. We dial 911 and we Tonglen.

We do what we can worldly wise. And we Tonglen because our Tonglen is growing our Bodhichitta and our Bodhichitta is growing our Buddhahood, and their suffering is the arena within which we glimpse what's in the seeds in our own heart that make up our me and my world. They are the opportunity for us to change that. We weed out the weeds and plant virtue, plant goodness.

So any suffering we see is this opportunity for us to purify our own negative seeds just by witnessing that distress. We don't have to experience the distress ourselves. We don't have to experience jumping off a cliff in order to purify pushing people off cliffs.

We just need to recognize, other’s suffering is ripening from my seeds. I'm going to use that opportunity to take it from them and to give them happiness. I'll do it on my breath and I'll do it in my mind. And just like opening the door, it will have it plants its seed and it will give its result later.

That's why we do it.

Is there any limit to what suffering we can take and what goodness we can give?

No. In our imagination there's no limit. Maybe we're limited by the amount of time we have to spend on the fantasy.

Are we limited in our worldly world what we can do?

I sure am. And that sense of limitation makes me not even want to look. Do you see how the cycle goes?

I don't want to know about it if I can't do anything about it. Very common theme.

Okay, let's take our break. That went fast. 

(64:55) (student: Teacher, can I ask a question? Because our last practice Tongleng, we are picking a new person who we may not know that well. But my question is like, actually we have so many people we love. They have so many problems. We don't even have enough time to Tongleng all of them. So we still need to find a neutral person to do Tongleng. And what's the differences between doing for those we love and those we may not even know?)

Yeah, good question. You know, we want to do Tongleng on those we love because we love them. So it's easy and effective and powerful. And maybe it's true that would be all we would need to do. Because as our Tongleng becomes effective, there are more people that we love. Right? We will love more as our Tongleng gets stronger. And there won't be any neutral people or people that we dislike, which is who we're doing this time. But when it comes to our compassion, our compassion comes up naturally with people we love. And we still let ourselves not pay enough attention to people we don't know or that we don't like, so our compassion doesn't come up. So if Tongleng is about growing our Bodhichitta, we would want to go to Tongleng beings that we don't naturally care so much about, in order to grow our compassion. So that would be the reason. 

(student: May I ask a question? I keep thinking the seeds that unfold in childhood when we are like open and vulnerable and independent, and where it appears that others are training us to be sane and well socialized actors. Most of us get ingrained in this mistake in every interaction that happens from when we don't have any, any choice, right? I mean, it's in a way. So, we believe that my code, my country, my culture, my family, that those are what we need to be happy. So, but now as an adult or an individual, I'm trying to desperately unlearn that in a way that I can still interact in the world and not fall off the cliffs and get depressed and turn into a vegetable that's afraid to go outside my door. And so actually Tongleng seems to me like to be the first tool that might kind of like actually offer a way to do this. Because when you're sitting in meditation, you're still kind of like separated from the world, so you're, it's like being on your mountain and you can, you can set up everything all perfect. But the hard thing is to do it in the world, right? And this seems like the first tool that really gives you a way to do that. And so anyway, I'm not sure what the question is, but yay Tongleng, go Tongleng.)

Yay Tongleng, go Tongleng. Exactly, exactly.

(student: I keep thinking about sanity, about how, aren't you kind of like trying to learn to be insane?)

It's a fine line. Fine line between wisdom and sanity. You know, one of the, I don't know what to call, can I use the word woke, woke teachers of our time is Carolyn Myss. You know, her name is spelled M-Y-S-S. She's extraordinary, gifted, gifted, medical intuitive, but so much more, so much more. I lost my train of thought. Of sanity. Yeah. Her PhD, she has a PhD in theology. Her PhD was about this fine line between schizophrenia and spiritual realization. And when we learn Diamond Way, learn about those great Yogis of Diamond Way, some of them, they're just crazy people. You know, they don't follow any of the rules. They run around naked half the time. They just yell at people, set your house on fire and you'll be happy. Like they give these crazy instructions and it's like, because their reality is so different. And then how do you function?

Do you have to become a crazy Yogi to make progress on your path? No.

But do we have to get off automatic pilot of that socialization that we learned by beings that didn't know any better? Our seeds ripening that we're trained as kids to socialize because that's reality. Those are our seeds.

(student: And then the self-correcting things in society that lock up or drug, or those people that do manifest spiritual realizations the wrong way.)

The wrong way. Right. Because it's true, right?

If your spiritual realizations are telling you, it doesn't matter what you do to other beings, then those are not spiritual realizations. That's crack with reality.

If your spiritual realizations are saying never yell back, no matter what. Never hurt somebody, no matter what. And we're doing that to such extent that we can't really even live according to the rules of our society because our rules of our society say, no, no, you should hurt somebody before they hurt you. What's the matter with you? Let yourself get hurt. That's not…

It's like, but that's a fine line because that's not what a spiritual teacher is telling you either. It would have to be our own personal conclusion. I understand seeds so well. 

(student: The Bodhisattva vow about not talking about emptiness too soon, right? Sort of woven in there too. You're not supposed to go around heading the ground out from everybody, even though the place we want to be is where we let go of the ground.)

Exactly. Exactly. Because of the misunderstanding that comes. Oh, nothing's real. So nothing matters. And it's like, no, nothing's real. So every detail of my behavior matters, because that's where I'm creating. Buddhism says there's no creator of the world. Yes, there is. You. You are the creator of your world. Me is the creator of my world. There is no other creator of the world. But my every moment of awareness is creating. And you don't go around saying, Look, you're the creator of your world to somebody who isn't ready to hear that. Because it's like, okay, great. I'm going to do anything I want. Wrong.

I mean, right. You can do anything, and you're going to get it all back at you. Yeah. Thanks.

Tonglen-ing at the Moment of Death

(74:56) There's another Tonglen. There's another time, the maybe the most powerful Tonglen that we can do is to be Tonglen-ing as we die. When we die, when we are ripening the seeds for the end of this life time, we call that dying. That process, they say, has a unique and particular and exquisitely terrible pain.

It's a physical pain beyond description, because your physicality is disappearing. And it's a mental emotional pain beyond describing, because it's a ripping away of the me that we spent a whole lifetime protecting and relating to.

We're so habituated to me and my life, that when that's becoming more and more nebulous, the experience of that, we call it a dissolution, is terrifying. And that terror is painful.

So we avoid thinking about it, we avoid considering that it could happen. We, for self protection, we learned as little kids, don't worry, it's not going to happen for a long time. Don't think of it. And yet our self protection mechanism is engaged all the time, in order to avoid it.

Any being who experiences dying will experience that pain.

Any being who perceives themselves as living will die.

So every being is gonna have the pain of death.

They say, like the ultimate Tonglen is to be able to Tonglen, as we personally go through that experience. To do that would mean that having this ability to be aware enough to be saying, this pain I'm experiencing, I'm taking it away from the whole world. 

It's not so much I'm going to suck it in on my breath. I'm experiencing this pain, this pain of dying. And I'm doing it on behalf of every being that has to die too. I’m burning off my seeds, and by burning off my seeds, I'm burning off their seeds.

It's like, wait a minute, I can't burn off anybody else's seeds. But anybody else that I can be aware of as dying, and having the pain of dying is my seeds.

So to use my own pain of death, to burn off all pain of death for every being, it could be like the last thing you need to do. You could end up experiencing the truth of your own nature at the end of that process.

Meaning, they call it reaching the clear light and recognizing that clear light as your own true nature.

Every being in the process of dying will meet the clear light. What's meant by that's a long story. Let's just leave it there.

But untrained beings won't recognize it. And their reaction is a sense of ‘this’, It's not intellectual, it's not physical, but it's a, it's a back away instead of go into, although it's not a thing. And that back away is the impulse that pushes me, me, me into Bardo and then into rebirth.

So, one of the tasks to transform our death into an opportunity is to be able to recognize that clear light as our own true nature, and all that that conveys.

To Tonglen, going through that process, taking away all those seeds and having this, as I'm doing that, I'm giving all beings freedom from that pain as they go through this thing–you wouldn't even call it dying anymore. That goodness is so extraordinary. And that it's ripening result would help us recognize that clear light–is the premise.

But how are we going to Tonglen at death?

If we're not so habituated to Tonglening as our default reaction in the place where we are aware of suffering, we're using our Tonglen when we see somebody else's suffering, and we're using our Tonglen to think of our own future suffering. When we Tonglen at death, we're using Tonglen as our response to current suffering that we are experiencing.

Our on the meditation time Tonglen practice, maybe we enjoy it so much we end up doing an actual hour of Tonglen a day. But then the other 23 hours of our day, we're back in ordinary me mode, ignoring sufferings until I get on my cushion again.

In order to grow the ability to Tonglen while we're dying, we can use all day Tonglen to train ourselves for Tonglening to be the default that our mind goes to any time we are experiencing suffering, whether it's suffering in someone else or our own suffering. Our automatic reaction could be Tonglen.

In which case, when we find ourselves going through that process of dying, that suffering, our default mode is to Tonglen. Tonglen that pain, whether it's been coming on for years from our cancer, or our heart attack that's taking a couple of hours, or we're flying through the windshield of our car.

If we have habituated to Tonglen as our default mode, we will default to it, even in that critical moment. Or the likelihood of defaulting to it will be greater, if we've spent a lot of time in those other 23 hours, reminding ourselves, Oh, I can always Tonglen.

We can learn anything by way of making a habit of it, says Master Shantideva, because every time we do do it, we're planting seeds for that's my response, when I witness or experience pain. I Tonglen and I act worldly if I can.

Do Tonglen All Day Long

How do we do all day Tonglen?

We learned that verse from the Lama Chupa that was the prayer asking the Lama for the blessing to be able to Tonglen. They said, learn that like a mantra and have it in mind to inspire us.

That verse said,

And then my High Holy Lama, Lama of all compassion,

give me your blessings, please,

so that all the pain of mother beings,

all their bad deeds and obstacles

may ripen upon me now.

And so that I may give them all my good and happiness

And this way assure that each one of them has all happiness.

Within that verse is the Bodhichitta that we're trying to grow.

May I become Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings.

To do so, I need to clear out my negativities, born of my selfishness, born of my ignorance. And I need to gather the goodness born of my growing understanding from which comes my growing love. Compassion is wanting to take pain away. The willingness to try. Love is wanting others to be happy, and the willingness to try to contribute to that in some way.

By asking our Holy Lama to bless our mind to be able to do that, we are planting the seeds to be able to do so. And we can only do so as Buddhas by way of teaching beings how to do it themselves.

The Lama's recommendation was, memorize this prayer. Train to have it on your mind all the time and let those blessings color our reactions to our all-day experiences. Open ourselves up to the willingness to notice whether someone seems to be in some kinds of distrust. Even notice those that don't seem to be in distrust, they're having the suffering of change.

And we're all having this pervasive suffering. And trigger something to remind ourselves that when we do see some distress, hey, this is my seeds ripening. It's an opportunity to Tonglen. My seeds are ripening and being burnt off just by seeing their pain.

A wrong thought might be, well, so all I have to do is see it. And then it ends because I go on my way and I don't see it anymore. I burnt off those seeds. That would be true, but it would be missing this opportunity to act on our compassion.

What do we do?

We're breathing. You see that pain? You think, oh, seeds ripening, their pain. I can do something about it. (sucking in air) Just with your next inhale, suck it out of them. You don't have to visualize the black. Just, I see it. I'm going to take it. Suck it in, use it to destroy my own seeds for seeing it. You're going to exhale, exhale them some relief. 

Just may you be happy. May your pain go away. And then go on your way. Right?

Next moment, there's another person in some kind of distress. You're breathing anyway. I'll take it. I'll give them some happiness.

That's that fast. It requires paying attention and recalling, I can Tonglen. The effect, it's having, it's an effect on our subtle body, as we learned before. It's planting seeds in our own mind. Hey, I can do something in the moment. I don't know the result from that, what I did in the moment, and that's fine. bBecause I don't ever know the result of what I do in the moment. But I'm willing to pay attention. I'm willing to try.

You get on the bus. Hi, bus driver. And you know, they've been in that seat all day, right? Customers being rude to them. Just take that in, destroy it in your heart. Give them some happiness. And all you say is, Hi, bus driver. Nice to see you. Thank you for driving. You've been one kindness in bus drivers’ day.

Then you see the tired businessmen. You're fatigued, you're tired, you're whatever. May your wife give you a big hug when you get home.

Then the mom in the back of the bus, who's got twin boys, they're three years old. Nobody wants to go sit with the twins. There you go, Tonglen-ing mom, interacting with the twins, to give her a little bit of aid, relief, whatever.

We can do it. The effect on our own heart will be this growing ability to see the little ways that we can have a kinder effect on our world. Instead of just going through staying out of everybody's way. That was like my Emo. Just, don't be an obstacle. And that shifts to, yeah, don't be an obstacle and look them in the eye, smile, say hello, make a comment, a pleasant comment. It's all born of our Tonglen practice.

Because our Tongle is burning off our negativity and our mistaken mind and planting seeds: I want their happiness. Not meaning I want to take it from them. I want to give them some happiness. Right?

All meant to increase our us on our path to becoming the one who will help them ultimately someday. Little bitty ways. They plant seeds in our minds and they grow.

In order to Tonglen at death, we train ourselves to Tonglen by default. And then we don't need to worry about whether we'll Tonglen at death or not, it will be our default mode when there's any distress.

I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to revisit this, because my default mode had gotten off automatic pilot. Like I was taking it for granted and not using it consciously. So I'm glad to have it back. So thank you for that.

Meditation: Tonglen a Person We Don’t Like

(94:38) Let's do our meditation.

This time, I'd like you to use someone that you have trouble with, like someone who pushes those buttons.

Maybe somebody who pushes our buttons is also somebody we love. But if you can find someone who pushes your buttons, that somebody that because of that, you really don't care for them so much. It's a little bit of a different feel in the Tonglen.

So either way, pick somebody. Can you find somebody?

Keep them in mind when we get there. We'll do our preliminaries fairly swiftly, because I talked too much, and then we'll call forth that person.

So settle your body first of all.

Bring your attention to your breath.

Get that mind focused, clear, and the eager switch turned on. Eager to hear where I take you.

Now bring up your refuge. One way to do it is to think of just one of the amazing qualities that you will have when you realize your Buddha-you, and recognize that the way that you will be perceiving yourself with that good quality is because of all the kindnesses that you planted in your mind to create that good quality.

And so you recognize that you can and will do it, because of the marriage of karma and emptiness.

You can and will know yourself with that good quality.

And think, what will you do with that good quality? How will you use it to help others? This is our Bodhichitta.

Then think of that precious holy being that you call forth at the beginning of class.

Recognize how they have guided you and inspired you and how they will be the one who helps you grow those good qualities.

Feel your admiration for them, your aspiration, your determination to follow their guidance.

Feel your gratitude and make them an offering something from your practice.

See them so happy with you and clean your heart of some negativity.

Feel your regret. Establish your antidote. It can be this meditation and your power of restraint and fill that space with rejoicing.

Tell them of some other kindnesses you've done or seen others do.

Ask that precious holy being to please stay close to you.

Ask them to help you recognize their guidance coming to you through other beings.

Ask them to please bring you all you need for your progress on this path.

And then dedicate these preliminaries to your Bodhichitta growing swiftly and deeply. 

Then bring your attention back to your breath to reset your focus, your clarity, your eagerness.

And picture next that one person who's giving you the most trouble in life right now. They seem to be making you suffer.

Imagine where they might be right now and take invisible-you to be there with them. 

Recognize our tendency to be wanting to sort out how and why they are causing our distress.

But for this Tonglen practice, our task is to set that aside and pay attention to them to see how they are probably suffering. It's making them behave in that way towards us. 

Look beyond our own problem.

Maybe it's a simple worldly thing. Maybe you recognize, oh, they're actually jealous of me. That's why they behave like that.

Or maybe we recognize, oh my gosh, they have chronic back pain. No wonder they're so short-tempered. Oh, they're feeling disrespected by their boss.

Tear down our own resistance to wanting to help them.

Yes, they are the cause of my problems, seem to be. But they have problems of their own.

Decide that you want, that you wish, that you could stop that pain that they're having, that suffering that they're having, regardless of liking them or not liking them.

Decide to gather all their distress and the seeds for more of it, and use your mind to focus to see all that black yuck inside of them gathering into that tiny little ball in the center of their chest. Use five breaths to gather it all.

Once you have it gathered, make the decision to take it from them.

And then start your concentration on your exhales.

Use 10 exhales for that breath to go and hook that black ball.

Then 10 more inhales to pull it up and bring it to your nostrils, starting now.

When you have it hovering below your nostrils, identify that they're suffering again.

And then look into your own middle of your chest. See that red flame?

Identify it as your own similar mental afflictions, own similar behavior propelled by our misunderstanding and the selfishness that comes from it.

And recall that by bringing their suffering to meet with our own seeds, the two will obliterate when they touch in that flash of light, the wisp of smoke, and we can rest in freedom from it all.

So when you're ready, get that all clear. Then a long exhale and the inhale on your own time.

And back to normal breathing as you rest in that freedom.

Then turn your inner gaze to that other person, see that they are feeling relief as well. 

And let yourself feel good about their feeling better. And maybe even a little bit of love for them grows.

And you feel within your own body, that invisible body, that growing white light of love and wisdom. It propels you to want to even give them more happiness than just the relief of their distress.

So use your exhales to send a beam of this white light of love and wisdom towards them. Use five breaths to get it to them.

And then continue sending them more.

You see it pour over them, enveloping them, and pour into them.

And every structure and organ that that white light of your love and compassion touches, completely purifies, bringing their body to perfect health. It pours into the middle of that area of their chest in the middle, cleaning their emotions, giving them happiness, giving them love, loving kindness.

See their own mind-heart, growing in love, growing in compassion, growing in wisdom. 

Keep sending them your love, your compassion.

You're watching them transform more and more until you see them glowing in light, transformed into a being made of love, made of compassion.

And you see them burst forth with rays of light, going out to all the beings of their world, helping them in the same way that you've helped this one.

Feel how good it feels to give them that.

Then bring that invisible you back into this you.

Think of the goodness that we've just done, the seeds we have ripened and the seeds that we have planted in our mind–by this course, by this class, by this Tonglen session.

[Dedication]

Thank you again for the opportunity to share.

You're so welcome. Please Tonglen.

(students’ Thank you’s)

(organizational details)

(student: Can I ask a simple question? You see, a movie is a kind of a projection. We are watching a movie, is a projection from a projector. And then our life, is a projection also. And to me, I really like still thinking our life is a projection and who is watching us. So kind of thing.)

Who is watching you?

(student: Who?)

Yeah, who is? All the omniscient beings.

(student: Oh, okay.)

All the Buddhas. Especially the one you call forth, they are watching you. They are watching your movie. That's a nice analogy.

(student: Oh, okay. Now I'm still like, figure out, we are projecting, all around us and I still cannot get used to it, you know. Because, you know, it looks like so real.)

It is real. Yeah. There, you did it. It's so real. It can't be a projection.

It's only real because it's projection. It's so hard.

(student: So, okay. And then until really like, we sort of like we see the emptiness ourself, only then we know that all around us is a projection, is it?)

We know it, but we don't see it that way until 8th level Bodhisattva. After seeing emptiness directly for the first time, you come out of it. You still have seeds colored with that misunderstanding, they are still ripening. But what's gone is your belief that that's true. So, you still experience things as if they are real in them, from them, but you don't believe it anymore. So, because of the disbelief, your interaction with those things that seem to have their own natures is planted without the belief.

When we still have the belief, we're replanting the belief. And every replanted seed with the belief in own nature strengthens every other seed that has the belief. So, when we no longer are adding to the belief with every moment of seed planting, the ignorance that's left behind is getting weaker, weaker, weaker, weaker. But it's still there.

So, it still looks like things are coming at us until we finally damage those seeds enough, shrunk them enough that they're just like dust. And at that point, we could call that Nirvana, no more mental afflictions, because there's no more ignorance ripening enough to trigger a mental affliction, but not yet omniscient because of the dust.

(student: So, do we have a chance to learn the Bodhisattva Eight Levels? I mean, in ACI courses, do we have a course like this?)

The ACI courses don't teach the Eight Levels, Bodhisattva Levels. One of the translators, I'm not sure which one, is working on a text that is a commentary on a text about the Eight Levels. Even in Diamond Way training, we didn't go into the Eight Levels, Eight Bodhisattva Bhumis, in depth. There are texts about it, even ones that are translated into other languages. They're difficult, apparently. So, I don't have that up my sleeve.

Okay Bye Bye.