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Christian Tonglen
I'm not sure if anyone here would be interested, but a few years ago I experimented with creating a Christian type of tonglen practice. I put it together on 9/11, I think, or perhaps the day after, and posted it to a Christian website where I was regularly dialoguing at the time (as a Buddhist). The Christians there didn't respond to it very well, though -- or really much at all! Anyway, I thought I'd share it here as well...
~*~
Seeing the devastation wrought in the US today, and anticipating that there may be more violence to follow, I felt probably with all of you how more than ever prayer and goodwill are needed. Prayer may accomplish much; we have to have that faith, that conviction in our hearts, when we turn our minds to these things. But of course, more is needed as well: growth in our hearts, so that we are truly peacemakers in the world; and action that contributes to this end.
With this in mind, I wanted to share with you a very old form of Tibetan prayer, which I have modified for Christian practice. This involves visualization along with one’s prayer, but the visualization is not to work any ‘magic’ – it is simply to support the prayer, and to embody it on more than a verbal level. Because we are more than words; words are the surface of our experience. Using images, it is as though we ‘pray’ with our feeling as well as our thoughts. This practice is called Tonglen, which means something like ‘giving and receiving.’
Before beginning Tonglen (or any meditation or prayer), usually one first invites ‘union’ in one’s heart and being. Calling on the name of Jesus, imagine Him before you, radiant, encircled by a halo of light. You may want to offer this prayer (which is modeled on a traditional guruyoga prayer):
In the depths of my heart
In the palace of Great Joy,
I pray to You, my God
in Three Persons,
My Lord, My Friend, and my Guide.
May I be renewed, not I,
But Christ in Me.
Please help me to realize You
As my own deepest Truth.
Feel His presence, the power of his eyes on you, his hands open or outstretched. Usually, one invites purification by the nectar of the divine, which is poured over you like a waterfall, passing through every cell of your body. Here, you can perhaps imagine that from the outstretched hands of Jesus, his blood pours over you like wine, over every inch of your being, purifying you. Feel this gift, sense it with all of your feeling sense, smell it as though it enters you like the aroma of incense or flowers. Let your body as well as your mind know what it means to be thus purified. Offer whatever prayer is in your heart to him, and then imagine that his image in its halo of light becomes smaller and smaller, moving over the crown of your head. Then, without necessarily ‘seeing’ it, feel that He enters through the crown of your head (the fontanelle, which was once soft, like a door) and passes through you till He comes to rest in your heart. When He arrives in the heart, this is ‘union.’ Rest in this for a moment, without thought, but only thankfulness.
Tonglen proper may then begin with a prayer on love and compassion:
“Love is the supreme elixir
That overcomes the sovereignty of death.
It is the inexhaustible treasure
That eliminates poverty in the world.
It is the supreme medicine
That quells the world’s disease.
It is the tree that shelters all beings
Wandering and tired on the path of conditioned existence.
It is the universal bridge
That leads to freedom from unhappy states of birth.
It is the dawning moon of the mind
That dispels the torment of disturbing conceptions.
It is the great sun that finally removes
The misty ignorance of the world.”
~ Shantideva
Rest quietly without thinking anything in particular, feeling the effects of meditating and reflecting on Christ and love. Let one’s thoughts settle, as though coming home. After you feel calm and spacious, allow yourself to reflect again on Christ’s presence, on the incredible gift of his life and his suffering, on all the blessings that you have felt in your life, so that thankfulness and compassion are born in your heart.
Imagine in front of you, as vividly and as poignantly as possible, a person or persons who are suffering. Try and imagine every aspect of their pain and distress, whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, or all of the above. Then, as you feel your heart opening in sympathy and compassion for them, imagine that all of their sufferings manifest together and gather into a great mass of hot, black, grimy smoke.
Now, as you breathe in, visualize that this mass of black smoke dissolves, with your in-breath, into the very core of selfishness at your heart. Feel its heaviness enter your body. There it destroys completely all traces of self-cherishing, eliminating any obstructions that stand between you and the movement of Christic love in your heart.
Imagine, now, that the selfish knot in your heart has been destroyed, so that the presence of the Christ in you is fully revealed. As you breathe out, then, imagine that you are sending out His brilliant, cooling light of peace, joy, happiness and ultimate well-being to the persons in pain, and that its rays are purifying all of their negativity and pain. You might imagine that your whole body has been made transparent and radiant, so that it is truly a vehicle for love in the world.
At the moment the light of love and compassion streams out to touch the people in pain, it is essential to feel a firm conviction that all of their suffering and negativity have been purified, and to feel a deep, lasting joy that they have been totally freed of suffering and pain.
As you go on breathing normally in and out, continue with this practice, breathing into your body the black smoke of suffering and sin, breathing out well-being and blessing through Christ in you.
After some time, you may imagine that the subjects of your prayer become transparent and radiant as well, completely purified from within. Let this image grow brighter and brighter, until you feel immersed in a field of light. Whatever thought or feeling arises, let it be a piece of tinder that ignites and also becomes light, until all sense of inside and outside has vanished, and there is only the Light of the World. Rest in this spaciousness.
Traditionally, at the close of prayer, one ‘offers’ as a gift all the good feeling, all the blessings one feels, for the benefit of all beings. You may do this very simply, with words such as, “Lord, this blessing here with me now, I dedicate for the welfare of beings everywhere. May they all know Your peace.” In Buddhism, this usually includes non-human beings; that’s up to you!
Finally, I offer this closing reflection on love:
As a mother, at the risk of her life,
Watches over her only child,
Let us cherish an unbounded mind
For all living beings.
Let us have love for the whole world,
And develop an unbounded mind,
Above, below and all around,
Boundless heart of goodwill, free of hatred,
Standing, walking, sitting or lying down,
So long as we are awake,
Let us cherish this thought.
This is called Divine Abiding Here.
~Karaniyametta Sutta
And a dedication:
Lord,
make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
~ St. Francis of Assisi
~*~
Peace,
Balder
~*~
Seeing the devastation wrought in the US today, and anticipating that there may be more violence to follow, I felt probably with all of you how more than ever prayer and goodwill are needed. Prayer may accomplish much; we have to have that faith, that conviction in our hearts, when we turn our minds to these things. But of course, more is needed as well: growth in our hearts, so that we are truly peacemakers in the world; and action that contributes to this end.
With this in mind, I wanted to share with you a very old form of Tibetan prayer, which I have modified for Christian practice. This involves visualization along with one’s prayer, but the visualization is not to work any ‘magic’ – it is simply to support the prayer, and to embody it on more than a verbal level. Because we are more than words; words are the surface of our experience. Using images, it is as though we ‘pray’ with our feeling as well as our thoughts. This practice is called Tonglen, which means something like ‘giving and receiving.’
Before beginning Tonglen (or any meditation or prayer), usually one first invites ‘union’ in one’s heart and being. Calling on the name of Jesus, imagine Him before you, radiant, encircled by a halo of light. You may want to offer this prayer (which is modeled on a traditional guruyoga prayer):
In the depths of my heart
In the palace of Great Joy,
I pray to You, my God
in Three Persons,
My Lord, My Friend, and my Guide.
May I be renewed, not I,
But Christ in Me.
Please help me to realize You
As my own deepest Truth.
Feel His presence, the power of his eyes on you, his hands open or outstretched. Usually, one invites purification by the nectar of the divine, which is poured over you like a waterfall, passing through every cell of your body. Here, you can perhaps imagine that from the outstretched hands of Jesus, his blood pours over you like wine, over every inch of your being, purifying you. Feel this gift, sense it with all of your feeling sense, smell it as though it enters you like the aroma of incense or flowers. Let your body as well as your mind know what it means to be thus purified. Offer whatever prayer is in your heart to him, and then imagine that his image in its halo of light becomes smaller and smaller, moving over the crown of your head. Then, without necessarily ‘seeing’ it, feel that He enters through the crown of your head (the fontanelle, which was once soft, like a door) and passes through you till He comes to rest in your heart. When He arrives in the heart, this is ‘union.’ Rest in this for a moment, without thought, but only thankfulness.
Tonglen proper may then begin with a prayer on love and compassion:
“Love is the supreme elixir
That overcomes the sovereignty of death.
It is the inexhaustible treasure
That eliminates poverty in the world.
It is the supreme medicine
That quells the world’s disease.
It is the tree that shelters all beings
Wandering and tired on the path of conditioned existence.
It is the universal bridge
That leads to freedom from unhappy states of birth.
It is the dawning moon of the mind
That dispels the torment of disturbing conceptions.
It is the great sun that finally removes
The misty ignorance of the world.”
~ Shantideva
Rest quietly without thinking anything in particular, feeling the effects of meditating and reflecting on Christ and love. Let one’s thoughts settle, as though coming home. After you feel calm and spacious, allow yourself to reflect again on Christ’s presence, on the incredible gift of his life and his suffering, on all the blessings that you have felt in your life, so that thankfulness and compassion are born in your heart.
Imagine in front of you, as vividly and as poignantly as possible, a person or persons who are suffering. Try and imagine every aspect of their pain and distress, whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, or all of the above. Then, as you feel your heart opening in sympathy and compassion for them, imagine that all of their sufferings manifest together and gather into a great mass of hot, black, grimy smoke.
Now, as you breathe in, visualize that this mass of black smoke dissolves, with your in-breath, into the very core of selfishness at your heart. Feel its heaviness enter your body. There it destroys completely all traces of self-cherishing, eliminating any obstructions that stand between you and the movement of Christic love in your heart.
Imagine, now, that the selfish knot in your heart has been destroyed, so that the presence of the Christ in you is fully revealed. As you breathe out, then, imagine that you are sending out His brilliant, cooling light of peace, joy, happiness and ultimate well-being to the persons in pain, and that its rays are purifying all of their negativity and pain. You might imagine that your whole body has been made transparent and radiant, so that it is truly a vehicle for love in the world.
At the moment the light of love and compassion streams out to touch the people in pain, it is essential to feel a firm conviction that all of their suffering and negativity have been purified, and to feel a deep, lasting joy that they have been totally freed of suffering and pain.
As you go on breathing normally in and out, continue with this practice, breathing into your body the black smoke of suffering and sin, breathing out well-being and blessing through Christ in you.
After some time, you may imagine that the subjects of your prayer become transparent and radiant as well, completely purified from within. Let this image grow brighter and brighter, until you feel immersed in a field of light. Whatever thought or feeling arises, let it be a piece of tinder that ignites and also becomes light, until all sense of inside and outside has vanished, and there is only the Light of the World. Rest in this spaciousness.
Traditionally, at the close of prayer, one ‘offers’ as a gift all the good feeling, all the blessings one feels, for the benefit of all beings. You may do this very simply, with words such as, “Lord, this blessing here with me now, I dedicate for the welfare of beings everywhere. May they all know Your peace.” In Buddhism, this usually includes non-human beings; that’s up to you!
Finally, I offer this closing reflection on love:
As a mother, at the risk of her life,
Watches over her only child,
Let us cherish an unbounded mind
For all living beings.
Let us have love for the whole world,
And develop an unbounded mind,
Above, below and all around,
Boundless heart of goodwill, free of hatred,
Standing, walking, sitting or lying down,
So long as we are awake,
Let us cherish this thought.
This is called Divine Abiding Here.
~Karaniyametta Sutta
And a dedication:
Lord,
make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
~ St. Francis of Assisi
~*~
Peace,
Balder
0
Comments
Today I wouldn't dream of practicing Tonglen without proper instruction. But I still do my little "thing" with my pets. And I have no qualms about it whatsoever. Funny isn't it?
Brigid
Although I'm no longer a Christian, and haven't been for many years, I find two Tibetan practices to provide a helpful way of looking at/conceiving of the central image of Christianity, Christ on the Cross: Tonglen and Chod. In tonglen, you take in the impurity of the world willingly, exchanging self for other; and in chod, you ritually offer your body as "food" to all sentient beings, that they may be nourished. In the Buddhist context, as I am familiar with it, both practices can be performed at different levels -- a tantric level, for instance, or a dzogchen level. If a Christian were to perform such practices, I imagine that they could do so as a conscious way of identifying with (and embodying) the kenotic agape of Christ.
Best wishes,
Balder
Yes, I can see how easily that could be put into a Christian practice. It's communion, but the other way around.
I was just reading about Exchanging Self for Others as one of the methods for bringing about bodhicitta in one of HH the Dalai Lama's books "An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life". It's an intro for beginners so there isn't too much in it that's new to me but I like the way he arranges it all. It's very nicely organized and in a way that I can appreciate.
I like this thread very much. I guess Vajrayana is in my heart because it's what I understand most easily and I'm completely at home and attracted to it and satisfied by it. (Sorry for the careless sentence construction. Challenging day for me with pain and hard to concentrate.)
Brigid
Best wishes,
Balder
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness and compassion. You've given me another thing for which to be grateful.
Now I can read without the distraction of the pain.
Brigid