Sogyal Rinpoche suggests that seeing someone in pain, in person or on the news, could inspire us to meditate on compassion. “Any one of these sights could open the eyes of your heart to the fact of vast suffering in the world. Let it. Don’t waste the love and grief it arouses; in the moment you feel compassion welling up in you, don’t brush it aside, don’t shrug it off and try quickly to return to ‘normal,’ don’t be afraid of your feeling or embarrassed by it, or allow yourself to be distracted from it or let it run aground in apathy. Be vulnerable; use that quick, bright uprush of compassion; focus on it, go deep in your heart and meditate on it, develop it, enhance, and deepen it. By doing this you will realize how blind you have been to suffering, how the pain that you are experiencing or seeing now is only a tiny fraction of the pain of the world.
“All beings, everywhere, suffer; let your heart go out to them all in spontaneous and immeasurable compassion, and direct that compassion, along with the blessing of all the Buddhas, to the alleviation of suffering everywhere.
“Compassion is a far greater and nobler thing than pity. Pity has its roots in fear, and a sense of arrogance and condescension, sometimes even a smug feeling of ‘I’m glad it’s not me.’ As Stephen Levine says: ‘When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.’ To train in compassion, then, is to know all beings are the same and suffer in similar ways, to honor all those who suffer, and to know you are neither separate from nor superior to anyone.”
Pema Chödrön, in Start Where You Are, gives instructions for the tonglen practice itself. Here is a brief excerpt about the main practice:
“You breathe in the pain of a specific person or animal that you wish to help. You breathe out to that person spaciousness or kindness or a good meal or a cup of coffee – whatever you feel would lighten their load. You can do this for anyone: the homeless mother that you pass on the street, your suicidal uncle, or yourself and the pain you are feeling at that very moment. The main point is that the suffering should be real, totally untheoretical. It should be heartfelt, tangible, honest, and vivid.”
After a while you expand the exchange: “You use specific instances of misery and pain as a stepping stone for understanding the universal suffering of people and animals everywhere. …. What you feel for one person, you can extend to all people.”
“You need to work with … both the immediate suffering of one person and the universal suffering of all. …. Working with both situations together makes the practice real and heartfelt; at the same time, it provides vision and a way for you to work with everyone else in the world.”
