“It is normal to try to shield ourselves from suffering. Suffering scares us and nobody wants to feel pain. However, the awareness of our own suffering is the link that connects us to others, and, moreover, to our own heart.” -- Kirsten Deleo1
“Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or non-believing, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering.” – HH XIVth Dalai Lama2
Most people, if not all, come to Buddhism to work with their personal suffering. Our own emotional and physical pain is certainly the most obvious when we meditate. Although in Mahayana Buddhism we take a vow to save all beings, it seems impossible to do that without first gaining an understanding of suffering at a personal level. Even then, the notion of saving all beings is a pretty daunting vow to have made.
When we sit Zazen, we learn to sit with our own suffering, holding it in compassionate presence without the need to always react to it. This is not a small thing to do. As Kirsten Deleo points out in the quote above, the most common response to suffering is to want to move away from it or cover it up in some way through distraction. T S Eliot puts it another way in The Four Quartets:
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality” (Burnt Norton, part I)
As we learn to sit with our own suffering, so we may become aware that we are also more able to sit with the suffering of others. By doing so, we may not be able to solve what is going on for them, but we can hold them with the same kind of compassionate presence that we do without ourselves when sitting.
Tonglen (or ‘taking and sending’) practice is another way of working with suffering, both our own and that of others (which we may be exposed to both in our day-to-day lives and through the news and print media). In tonglen practice, just as with the Metta chants, we begin with working with ourselves and gradually expand out to working with others and, finally, with all sentient beings. That can, in relative terms, be seen as expanding our heart to include more and more of what is outside us, but in Zen we also understand that we and other beings are not separate.
When we breathe in our own suffering and breathe loving kindness to ourself, we relate to suffering on a very personal level, based on the physical and emotional pain we are going through.
We then begin to think of others who are suffering, and that touches our hearts, and we can feel loving kindness and compassion arise in response to the plight of others.
Once we move to all sentient beings, the notion of suffering becomes universal, and we can sometimes feel that the suffering we are now touching goes beyond ideas of self and non-self, and so do the feelings of love. Just as in the practice of Shikantaza, body and mind can drop away, leaving the back and forth of suffering and compassion as each naturally responds to the other.
In Mahayana Buddhism, most of us know of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, the hearer of the cries of the world, who finds his/her form as Kuan Yin in Chinese Buddhism and Kannon/Kanzeon in Japan. The Lotus Sutra has an entire chapter devoted to the way that this bodhisattva will respond to people and Dōgen talks about him/her in the Kannon fascicle of Shōbōgenzō.
Kannon responds to the suffering of others immediately, without thinking, and without any sense of self or ego, “like someone in the night who reaches behind himself, his hand groping for his pillow”3. As suffering arises, loving kindness and compassion arise in response and we may feel this in our tonglen practice. We are not trying to see ourselves as people who are doing something noble or noteworthy, but instead observing the natural process of responding to suffering, first to our own pain, and then in response to the wider world.
Often I think that wherever I look there is suffering, but I notice also that wherever that is occurring, compassion is arising in response. In tonglen practice, we get to feel that for ourselves. Gently, breath by breath, we can touch both the seemingly limitless suffering of life in samsara, and a deep well of love that is within us all, and beyond all notions of self and selflessness.
Although he was not talking expressly about tonglen, Kōdō Sawaki Roshi said that "the world in which we give and receive is a serene and beautiful world. It differs from the world of scrambling for things. It’s vast and boundless." I feel this in tonglen practice, and hope that you can too.
1. This quote from Kirsten Deleo appears in her chapter Being a Compassionate Presence in the book ‘The Arts of Contemplative Care’ (Wisdom Books, 2012) edited by Cheryl A Giles and Willa B Miller
2. From 'Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together' by HH Dalai Lama (Harmony Books, 2010)
3. From Shōbōgenzō Kannon
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-
“Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or non-believing, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering.” – HH XIVth Dalai Lama2
Most people, if not all, come to Buddhism to work with their personal suffering. Our own emotional and physical pain is certainly the most obvious when we meditate. Although in Mahayana Buddhism we take a vow to save all beings, it seems impossible to do that without first gaining an understanding of suffering at a personal level. Even then, the notion of saving all beings is a pretty daunting vow to have made.
When we sit Zazen, we learn to sit with our own suffering, holding it in compassionate presence without the need to always react to it. This is not a small thing to do. As Kirsten Deleo points out in the quote above, the most common response to suffering is to want to move away from it or cover it up in some way through distraction. T S Eliot puts it another way in The Four Quartets:
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality” (Burnt Norton, part I)
As we learn to sit with our own suffering, so we may become aware that we are also more able to sit with the suffering of others. By doing so, we may not be able to solve what is going on for them, but we can hold them with the same kind of compassionate presence that we do without ourselves when sitting.
Tonglen (or ‘taking and sending’) practice is another way of working with suffering, both our own and that of others (which we may be exposed to both in our day-to-day lives and through the news and print media). In tonglen practice, just as with the Metta chants, we begin with working with ourselves and gradually expand out to working with others and, finally, with all sentient beings. That can, in relative terms, be seen as expanding our heart to include more and more of what is outside us, but in Zen we also understand that we and other beings are not separate.
When we breathe in our own suffering and breathe loving kindness to ourself, we relate to suffering on a very personal level, based on the physical and emotional pain we are going through.
We then begin to think of others who are suffering, and that touches our hearts, and we can feel loving kindness and compassion arise in response to the plight of others.
Once we move to all sentient beings, the notion of suffering becomes universal, and we can sometimes feel that the suffering we are now touching goes beyond ideas of self and non-self, and so do the feelings of love. Just as in the practice of Shikantaza, body and mind can drop away, leaving the back and forth of suffering and compassion as each naturally responds to the other.
In Mahayana Buddhism, most of us know of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, the hearer of the cries of the world, who finds his/her form as Kuan Yin in Chinese Buddhism and Kannon/Kanzeon in Japan. The Lotus Sutra has an entire chapter devoted to the way that this bodhisattva will respond to people and Dōgen talks about him/her in the Kannon fascicle of Shōbōgenzō.
Kannon responds to the suffering of others immediately, without thinking, and without any sense of self or ego, “like someone in the night who reaches behind himself, his hand groping for his pillow”3. As suffering arises, loving kindness and compassion arise in response and we may feel this in our tonglen practice. We are not trying to see ourselves as people who are doing something noble or noteworthy, but instead observing the natural process of responding to suffering, first to our own pain, and then in response to the wider world.
Often I think that wherever I look there is suffering, but I notice also that wherever that is occurring, compassion is arising in response. In tonglen practice, we get to feel that for ourselves. Gently, breath by breath, we can touch both the seemingly limitless suffering of life in samsara, and a deep well of love that is within us all, and beyond all notions of self and selflessness.
Although he was not talking expressly about tonglen, Kōdō Sawaki Roshi said that "the world in which we give and receive is a serene and beautiful world. It differs from the world of scrambling for things. It’s vast and boundless." I feel this in tonglen practice, and hope that you can too.
1. This quote from Kirsten Deleo appears in her chapter Being a Compassionate Presence in the book ‘The Arts of Contemplative Care’ (Wisdom Books, 2012) edited by Cheryl A Giles and Willa B Miller
2. From 'Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together' by HH Dalai Lama (Harmony Books, 2010)
3. From Shōbōgenzō Kannon
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-
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