Tonglen in Practice – By Michelle Welch

I recently had an opportunity to do tonglen, the practice of breathing in others’ suffering and breathing out what would relieve their suffering. Pema Chodron has some teachings about doing tonglen on the spot, when you encounter something in the world that upsets you.

 

“If you’re in a jealous rage and you have the courage to breathe it in rather than blame it on someone else, the arrow you feel in your heart will tell you that there are people all over the world who are feeling exactly what you’re feeling. This practice cuts through culture, economic status, intelligence, race, religion. People everywhere feel pain – jealousy, anger, being left out, feeling lonely. Everybody feels it in the painful way you feel it.” (Comfortable with Uncertainty, chapter 43, Tonglen: The Key to Realizing Interconnectedness)

 

My opportunity happened when the payroll department at my workplace made a mistake on my timecard, causing me to lose pay for overtime I’d worked. After discovering what had been done and learning that the problem wasn’t going to be fixed, I realized I had a choice. I could do what I usually did – rehash everything that happened over and over again, both in my mind and out loud to anyone who would listen, so I could figure out just where to lay the blame – or I could use this as an opportunity for tonglen. In my relatively privileged, middle-class, salaried life, I rarely experience the kind of monetary losses that other people do: poverty, unemployment, falling prey to scammers. I had the opportunity to put myself in their shoes, if only in this minimal way.

 

But that wasn’t the end of the practice. Having committed to my choice, I had to keep choosing it. Every time I was tempted to complain about the payroll mistake to a coworker or my friend, I had to remind myself not to. I even hesitated to write this post, afraid I’d just spiral back into discursive rehashing, laying blame and bolstering my emotional reactions. It’s not an easy spiral to fight, but committing to tonglen can be a useful start.