Tonglen: The Sacred Practice of Exchanging Ourselves for Others with Compassion
Of all the practices I know, the practice of Tonglen, which in Tibetan means “giving and receiving,” is one of the most useful and powerful. When you feel yourself locked in upon yourself, Tonglen opens you to the truth of the suffering of others; when your heart is blocked, it destroys those forces that are obstructing it; and when you feel estranged from the person who is in pain before you, or bitter or despairing, it helps you to find within yourself and then to reveal the loving, expansive radiance of your own true nature. No other practice I know is as effective in destroying the self-grasping, self-cherishing, and self-absorption of the ego, which is the root of all our suffering and the root of all hard-heartedness.
–Chapter 12, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
Upon the publication of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, now twenty years ago, the introduction and explanation to the western world of the Buddhist practice of Tonglen for training the mind in compassion, had a tremendous and lasting impact on many readers.
In this teaching, Sogyal Rinpoche discusses some of the key points of the practice, as well as it’s deeper significance. To learn how to do the practice itself, please see Chapter 12 of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
For more teachings by Sogyal Rinpoche on compassion, see the Teachings page of SogyaRinpoche.org, or the videos page on The Tibetan Blog of Living and Dying.
And for those fortunate to be in Europe, Patrick Gaffney, one of Sogyal Rinpoche’s senior-most students and editor of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, will be giving talks in Paris and Valencia, Spain in the upcoming weeks. For more information, see here.
Before the Book: Sogyal Rinpoche on Contemplation
Here is a rare and precious clip of Sogyal Rinpoche teaching at an informal gathering of the Australian Institute of Transpersonal Studies in Brisbane in the mid-1980s, years before the publication of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Rinpoche speaks about the importance of the practice of contemplation, as one of the three wisdom tools (listening, contemplation and meditation), which are further explained in Chapter 8.
As Patrick Gaffney recently recalled, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying was the culmination of twenty years of Sogyal Rinpoche teaching in the West.
So enjoy this short sample of the early teachings that would develop into that great classic of spiritual literature.
This is it.
Rafael
Rafael Saenz writes from Barcelona: “Here is my story: A friend of mine recommended The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying to me, back in 1993. I was living in New York City at the time. The book had just come out, and it was a big success. I bought a copy, but since I had no special interest in Buddhism or in Tibet at that time, I did not read it for a while. It just sat on my bookshelf. One day—don’t ask me why—I began to read it. Read More
The Tibetan Wisdom on Life and Death part 3
Here is the third and final part of the talk we have presenting over the last weeks.
On the occasion of the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Paris in October 2003, Sogyal Rinpoche gave this memorable talk on the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of life and and death to an audience of over 3,000 people.
In part three of this talk, Rinpoche explains how the life we lead determines how we will face death, and he gives precious advice for the moment of death from the great Buddhist master Padmasambhava.
You can find parts one and two of this talk here.
This talk is also available as an audio podcast which you can find on our Audio page.
The Tibetan Wisdom on Life and Death part 2
Here is part two of the talk we began presenting last week.
On the occasion of the visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Paris in October 2003, Sogyal Rinpoche gave this memorable talk on the Tibetan Buddhist understanding of life and and death to an audience of over 3,000 people.
In this second part of the talk, Rinpoche shows how it is through meditation that we discover what Milarepa calls ‘the deathless unending nature of mind.’
The third and final part of this talk will be posted in the following week.
You can find part one of this talk here.
This talk is also available as an audio podcast which you can find on our Audio page.
