Vajrayana Tonglen

misecmisc1

hi all,

good morning to all of you.

does anyone of you practice vajrayana tonglen?

The below video url i had downloaded nearly an year back or may be 2 years back and i heard it at that time.
http://www.dharmaocean.org/episode-16-vajrayana-tonglen/

but day before yesterday, i tried for a guided meditation on tonglen from a different url, so yesterday a thought came to me to listen again to the above audio talk on my laptop. so i listened it again yesterday. there is one main statement in that talk, which is something like, if i remember it correctly, is something like - which ever person turns up in our life in any definitive way, they are aspects of ourselves, which are coming to meet us and help us complete ourselves and same is true with those other persons too. also it says something like - we should welcome those attributes, which we do not consider nice, to balance our ego. so what does this mean exactly - if suppose a person has become calm, then if he meets an angry person, should that calm person welcome anger in him, in order to eradicate the ego inside him which would be saying to him that he is a calm person - but this does not seem to make much sense? so most probably i have misunderstood what is being said in the above audio talk. So can somebody please correct my understanding and help me by explaining what is done in vajrayana tonglen? Thanks in advance for your help.

Jeffrey

you exchange yourself for other. you give them calm because that's what you want and you take their anger because it is what you do not want. how long was the talk? best thing is to ask a teacher who teaches in that lineage so you can straighten these questions out.

but not sure what you mean but there is common sense. you don't just walk up to people and give them all your money. Trungpa rinpoche wrote a book about the lojong slogans which are the slogans Atisha brought back from Indonesia and they are to be used with tonglen.

but I would hope to have a teacher. I have asked my teacher a few questions about tonglen which came up for me.

karasti

Pema Chodron has excellent instructions online on Tonglen, very easy to understand, highly recommend. Sogyal Rinpoche's "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" covers Tonglen as well in an easy to understand way.
What @Jeffrey said is the same as I understand it.

Life is always about balance. We tend to fall into a rut of "This is who I am, deal with it!!!" but it is our job, and our job alone, to balance our qualities. Just like driving, it is a constant balancing act, adjusting all the time. You can't just hold the wheel still and go, you adjust it slightly to the left and right constantly. Same in life. I hear so many people say things like "I'm a bitch, deal with it." when no, it's not my job to deal with it. It's your job to balance it. If you are easily angered, then you need to find the calm to balance it. Tonglen can help. I also practice it for those ill and hurting.

sova

Have you heard of fractals?

Fractals are like self-similar repeating patterns that never end. Much like how a fern grows (each leaf on a fern is self-similar to the greater pattern that is a fern).

There's a beautiful metaphor in (earlier) Buddhism called Indra's Net.

http://www.heartspace.org/misc/IndraNet.html

FAR AWAY IN THE HEAVENLY ABODE OF THE GREAT GOD INDRA, THERE IS A WONDERFUL NET WHICH HAS BEEN HUNG BY SOME CUNNING ARTIFICER IN SUCH A MANNER THAT IT STRETCHES OUT INDEFINITELY IN ALL DIRECTIONS. IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EXTRAVAGANT TASTES OF DEITIES, THE ARTIFICER HAS HUNG A SINGLE GLITTERING JEWEL AT THE NET'S EVERY NODE, AND SINCE THE NET ITSELF IS INFINITE IN DIMENSION, THE JEWELS ARE INFINITE IN NUMBER. THERE HANG THE JEWELS, GLITTERING LIKE STARS OF THE FIRST MAGNITUDE, A WONDERFUL SIGHT TO BEHOLD. IF WE NOW ARBITRARILY SELECT ONE OF THESE JEWELS FOR INSPECTION AND LOOK CLOSELY AT IT, WE WILL DISCOVER THAT IN ITS POLISHED SURFACE THERE ARE REFLECTED ALL THE OTHER JEWELS IN THE NET, INFINITE IN NUMBER. NOT ONLY THAT, BUT EACH OF THE JEWELS REFLECTED IN THIS ONE JEWEL IS ALSO REFLECTING ALL THE OTHER JEWELS, SO THAT THE PROCESS OF REFLECTION IS INFINITE

Now you are asking a very practical question, too, which is "if i see an angry person should i be like them, then?" and that would in fact be a destructive reflection to embody, since anger itself is base and useless, will burn down your house of much effort in making merits in one fell swoop.

What it does mean, however, is that the antidote you apply to your own mind to negotiate and dissolve anger is now applied in a more encompassing perspective. You see the lack of barrier and lack of substantiation in the claim of "me here - you there."

In a tonglen perspective you would be "taking" the person's anger and negativities, purifying them, and giving all goods (merit, wisdom, compassion, love) that you have to offer. Chogyam Trungpa simplified the equation a lot by saying "take all that is unwholesome and give everything positive that you have to give"

When we take negativities we are not embodying them or becoming them, we are giving our compassionate awareness of them which causes them to break down and dissolve into something like ambrosia. We give back and radiate only the best, while absorbing and healing our friends, our enemies, and the world-of-beings at large.