How to Do Tonglen
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Description
Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave this brief outline of tonglen, the meditation practice of generating bodhicitta by taking on the suffering of others and giving them happiness. This teaching is excerpted from "Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen," a teaching given at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, on June 4, 2020. Transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell. Lightly edited by Sandra Smith.
Citation
Zopa, Lama Thubten. "How to Do Tonglen." Teaching excerpted from '"Advice for Saka Dawa Duchen," a teaching given at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, on June 4, 2020. Transcribed by Ven. Joan Nicell, lightly edited by Sandra Smith. Nepal: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, 2020, https://www.lamayeshe.com/article/how-do-tonglen.
With Compassion, Take Suffering and the Cause of Suffering on Your Self-Cherishing Thought and Destroy It
With compassion, all the sufferings and the cause of suffering, delusion and karma, everything, including the undesirable suffering places, all absorb into your heart in the form of dark smoke. You give this to the self-cherishing thought, your enemy, your real enemy, that made you suffer from beginningless rebirths and remain in samsara. By following that [self-cherishing thought] you will suffer endlessly. It will let you suffer.
You will experience all the six realms’ oceans of suffering again and again, numberless times. The self-cherishing thought didn’t let you achieve enlightenment up to now. It didn’t let you achieve enlightenment, so destroy it. Destroy it, like a bomb. Like in America, when it was fighting Iraq, there was an army place, and from very, very, very far away they would shoot the missiles. Then it would exactly hit and blow the army camp to pieces. Like that, you destroy the self-cherishing thought.
With Compassion, Take Suffering and the Cause of Suffering on Your I-Grasping Ignorance and Destroy It
The self-cherishing thought cherishes the real I that is believed to exist by the I-grasping ignorance. This ignorance holds the I as real, as existing from its own side. It is gone, totally gone! Not there! Meditate on emptiness for a little while.
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