Tonglen

I have moments now when I feel as if I am holding the pain of everyone in my life, whether they are someone close, an acquaintance, or a stranger I pass by. I can’t feel the specifics of the pain because I haven’t experienced what each person has experienced, but the pain feels as if it is mine, even while wondering what the experiences that might give rise to their pain are actually like. I look at a single mom with a disabled child and I wonder about the struggle she might be undergoing. I imagine what their dinner time must be like for her. Whether she is lonely, scared, grateful, or calm. Despite just wondering and not knowing, I feel as if I hold all of the possible mix of emotions inside of me. 

There is a type of meditation called tonglen in which at every breath in, you breathe in all the pain of this world and at every breath out, you breathe out all the joy in yourself and give it to the world. My pain is no longer just mine, but the pain of everyone else. Their pain is inside me and my pain is inside them. Our individual stories don’t separate us. And when I send out my love and tenderness toward that pain, somewhere outside of myself instead of relating the pain only to me, I feel joy. I feel that I am part of a fabric of humanity that may be too large for us to imagine