Tara Brach leads a guided Tonglen meditation, a Tibetan practice of giving and receiving. She describes the suffering we meet in life as a gateway to compassion, and invites us to meet it with loving awareness.
Tonglen is a Tibetan practice of giving and receiving that is meant to awaken our innate capacity for compassion. In this meditation by Tara Brach, which she describes as a version of Tonglen meditation, we are guided into a deep and open awareness of the places within us that are calling for our attention. Where are we caught in repetition, resistance, or suffering?
Meditation Tonglen: Gateways Into Compassion
Brach explains how the suffering that we experience in life is a gateway into compassion. As we find the courage to meet whatever challenge or discomfort is present within us, the experience can begin to soften into compassion. Contrary to our human tendency to pull away from what is painful, this practice invites us to move more deeply into the experience. Where the felt experience is challenging, we can ease and facilitate our movement into a place of compassion by resting the hand on the heart or by focusing on the out breath, releasing whatever energies may be caught within us.
Collective Suffering and Compassion
In this meditation, we move first through our own experience of suffering and then expand our field of awareness, coming into contact with our humanity’s collective suffering. As we practice giving compassion to the collective, and to particular individuals in our lives who we know are struggling, we may feel the compassionate heart within us open.
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