By Pema Chödrön and Alice Walker — 1999
Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön and novelist Alice Walker on how tonglen meditation practice opens our heart, expands our vision, and plants the seeds of love in our lives.
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Compassion gets a lot of attention in positive psychology, and for good reason – it’s a major concern of many religious and philosophical leaders, including the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis.
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It can be powerful medicine for both your mind and relationships.
Many of us who want to make a positive impact on the world try to have compassion for other people. But how many of us ever think about directing that compassion toward ourselves?
If you approach your practice as a path of love, the rhythms of life will teach you moment by moment how to proceed. Each little discovery about what breathing feels like will give you more access to your inner life and the secret power of recovery built into your body.
If you suffer from chronic pain, and perhaps the angry emotions that hurting all the time can lead to, there’s a drug-free treatment that takes only 15 minutes a day and can bring real relief.
Loving-kindness meditation and compassion training boost empathic resilience.
Pema Chödrön teaches us “sending and taking,” an ancient Buddhist practice to awaken compassion. With each in-breath, we take in others’ pain. With each out-breath, we send them relief.
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Tonglen—the Tibetan practice of “sending and receiving”—can be put to use in everyday situations.
"Realizing that the other person is also just like me is the basis on which we can develop compassion, not only toward those around us but also toward our enemy. Normally, when we think about our enemy, we think about harming him.
This popular meditation, often called "Karuṇā" in Buddhist circles is all about opening up the heart and mind to be more compassionate to ourselves and others. It is a harder skill to develop than goodwill meditation as some emotions seem like compassion but will cause us more harm than good.