Tonglen - A Healing Way to Deal With Negativity and Suffering

Negative Emotions, Difficult Situations, and Difficult People are Part of Life

​Yet another news report comes across your screen that makes you grind your teeth with rage or wring your hands with fear.  Someone in your office makes your day-to-day life very frustrating.  You feel exhausted after visiting certain branches of your family.  A receptionist is snippy with you out of the blue.  A friend's family member just passed away.  Another hospital/embassy/town center in the world is bombed with heavy casualties.  You're struggling with a chronic illness.  Some internet troll starts spewing hateful opinions on your social media post.  Depression and anxiety are on the rise.  Suffering and strife are all around us.  Sometimes it's enough to make us want to flip a table!

Peeling Back the Onion on Hostility and Pain

Naturally, all of this is rooted in complex issues and there's always more to it than what we see.  Many psychoanalysts say that anger is an outward expression of pain and fear, and depression is anger turned inward.  On a systemic scale, racism, subjugation, and stereotyping are rooted in fear.  Judgmental people tend to judge themselves the harshest, and it comes from a place of insecurity.  The comedian George Carlin once said "Inside every cynical person is a disappointed idealist."  In "The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book" don Miguel Ruiz describes the drama in our relationships and our reaction to it as people touching the emotional wounds we get early in life, or our inadvertent touching of someone else's wounds.  For that reason, one of his Four Agreements is also "Don't take anything personally."  There is a beautiful true story by Terry Dobson, a late Aikido Master, in his anthology “The Peaceful Warrior" that tells of a drunk, violent man who accosted people on a Tokyo train and what happened when the author was about to use Aikido to diffuse the situation.  That story in particular made a profound impression on me for the rest of my life and I highly recommend taking a quick moment to read it.  All of these examples illustrate how suffering begets more suffering.  So what can we do about it?

Tonglen:  A Way to Re-frame It All

"Don't let it get to you" is a trite phrase that is easily said and some people sure don't make it easy to practice.  On a lighter note, Prince once recommended in his song "Let's Go Crazy": "...And if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy - punch a higher floor!"  Sounds fun, but sometimes that's really hard to do.  For myself, I practice Tonglen.

Tonglen ("giving and taking") is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice that addresses pain in a compassionate way.  It can be a quick in-the-moment thing you do anywhere, or it can be a more profound meditation you practice in private.  When facing conflict, or hearing bad news, or feeling discouraged, or grieving about atrocities in the world, take a moment to acknowledge the misery as you inhale a deep breath.  If you yourself are suffering, think of the millions of people in the world who are feeling what you're feeling.  As you exhale -- a relaxed allowing of breathing, not a pushing of air -- imagine a loving solution for the suffering.  Envision what you would give if you could: safety for refugees, abundance for the poor, serenity for an addict, relief for a person with cancer, genuine self-love for a hateful person, security for the worry-wort, belonging for the marginalized, healing for a family facing loss, peace for yourself.  Marie Forleo has a great video about tonglen and recommends saying to yourself on this exhale "May we all be free of this suffering."

You're taking in the suffering as you inhale, giving a loving intention as you exhale.

Pema Chödrön, an American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun, author, and teacher, eloquently describes tonglen and how it helps us to access compassion for others and for ourselves, and how we all benefit from that.

What Tonglen Is

• Taking a moment to acknowledge someone's pain, including your own, or recognizing that a situation really, really just sucks.  This may seem like oversimplifying but acceptance is important.  
• It takes you out of your center of self and turns your perspective towards others or the entire world.
• An opportunity for compassion and empathy. Understanding is a step towards harmony.
• A way to soften your hard, cynical edges.

What Tonglen Isn't

• Tamping down difficult feelings or blowing off difficult people:  all feelings are valid and should be processed.  Wallowing is unhealthy, but being the right amount of angry or sad about the right things is healthy.
• Blowing sunshine up your root chakra ;)  It's impossible to be positive all the time.
• Minimizing the graveness of suffering:  Everything has its relative scale.  Just because we try to see something in a different way doesn't mean it's not a big deal.
• Condoning bad behavior.
• Playing victim:  Quite the opposite; this practice makes it not about you.

Further Study

If you'd like to take this a step further and learn more about compassion, empathy, and how you can re-frame negativity and suffering, ​Pema Chödrön wrote a book titled "Tonglen, the Path of Transformation".

The Dalai Lama, who practices tonglen every day, said "Whether this meditation really helps others or not, it gives me peace of mind. Then I can be more effective, and the benefit is immense."  He has written extensively about compassion -- these quotes are great highlights to think about.

Also, there are several Ted Talks on the subject of compassion that may interest you.

If you have other methods of finding a loving way to deal with difficult people or situations, I'd love to hear about it in the comments below!  How would you apply tonglen to some situations you find yourself in?