Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s candid admission — “I was starting to get a head spin” during Tonglen practice — opens this 13.5-minute Q&A with Geshe Pema Tsering. He explains that beginners should separate the giving and taking phases rather than alternating with each breath, building the habit gradually before combining them. A second question asks whether Tonglen can help a practitioner’s suffering mother: focusing on her during practice generates virtue through her kindness, strengthening the karmic bond and creating positive tendencies to help her in future lives. He then addresses visualization anxiety directly: even without imagery, simply wishing to take on others’ suffering and give them one’s happiness is genuine Tonglen. He closes with a practical reframe — every moment of personal suffering can become an aspiration to bear it on others’ behalf, which paradoxically lightens the experience. Suited to practitioners beginning Tonglen who are struggling with its mechanics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 SoP 2004 08 09.mp3
UUID: 73c3427c-1b08-4c73-b43d-667cc7e41b9d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 13.5 minutes
Words: ~1,221
So I asked this question because I’m having trouble with it myself, but I thought it might be helpful for you guys too. That if you’re doing this meditation on giving and taking, that I found that if I was trying to imagine on my out breath that it’s going out to all sentient beings and the in breath that’s coming in, that I was starting to get a head spin because it was like, it’s all going out, it’s all coming in, and you go. And the way that you were thinking was changing so much that I couldn’t do it, the out breath going out and the in breath coming in. And just as I’d visualized, started to have an idea of sending that to beings, and I was breathing in again, so I was changing it. Does that make sense?
So I was having a lot of trouble. Geshe-la will say, well, that’s because you need to work up to that. Then you do that eventually when it becomes such a habit to you that you’re not focusing on it anymore. But at the beginning, when you’re sending taking and giving meditation, if you focus for a certain amount of time just on giving and then a certain amount of time just on taking, then that can be more helpful. Yeah.
At the moment, we can’t see that we have this ability to be able to give to others selflessly like that and help others by experiencing suffering for them. But if we keep meditating in this way, we’ll begin to understand that we have this ability, that we have this strength, and then we’ll be able to do it directly, so we familiarise ourselves with the practice and so we’ll be able to see our ability, that ability directly. Does that answer that? Yes. He said, yeah, this is absolutely possible.
That’s why this meditation needs to be done after or in conjunction with meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings that develop renunciation. If we understand our situation properly and we understand that we are actually in saṃsāra, are experiencing this kind of suffering and that the self-cherishing tendencies are the cause for that, then this is supposed to be done after that or in conjunction with that. So if we just do this, then we can develop grand ideas about ourselves first. So we need to establish first exactly what our situation is in Samsāra before we do this. And if you if you know exactly what you are in Samsāra, then there’s no way you can get arrogant or increase our self-cherishing.
Sure. Oh, yeah. Hang on. Yeah. It’s one sec.
Heather, you’re first. So you can actually this is gonna sound a bit complicated, so I have to listen. You can actually help your mother doing Tonglen practice for her now because as well because anytime that you focus on anyone in doing a Tonglen practice of taking and giving, they are actually acting as a cause for you to develop virtue. Right? And in that way, any virtue that you develop is because of their kindness.
Kindness. Right? So therefore, the connection between you and your mother, it becomes strengthened, you have a gratitude and indebtedness in a way to help your mother in a very beneficial way. And you’re focusing in that way, you are able to help her by developing a debt to her, yeah, or developing a karmic debt to her based on virtue. Right?
So you you have a a positive connection to your mother to help her at any stage in the future. So doing this practice not only helps you yourself because you’re the one doing the practice and helping creating virtue, but you also establish a positive pattern to be positive karmic tendency to be helpful towards your mother in the future. Okay. Sorry. Yeah.
Sure.. So developing our visualization skills is difficult, and it’s something that we need to keep working at in order to develop it. But it’s not the most important aspect of Tonglen, of this practice of giving and taking. Even if you can’t visualize all these beings in front of you or even your mother in front of you or light coming in and out, you can get the idea of your own suffering. You know that you’ve experienced suffering, that you’ve experienced suffering, so you can develop an idea of your own suffering.
If you’re thinking about your own suffering, then you think, just thinking, other beings are suffering, I don’t want them to suffer, I hope that they’re happy, I wish I could take on their suffering and give them my happiness, even thinking that without the visualisation is still practicing Tonglen. If you start with that, then you’re able to develop your ideas and your visualizations from that starting point. So we may not be able to as beginners, we may not be able to do all of these different visualization techniques. And Geshe-la was quoting including himself as a beginner there, so we said we as beginners. So we may not be able to do all these visualization techniques, but we can certainly try and understand our own suffering.
We can try and understand our experience of saṃsāra and the causes for our own suffering, our attachments and so forth. Then we can also think, Well, all sentient beings are exactly the same as me. Everybody else is exactly the same as me. They don’t want to experience suffering they want to experience happiness. Every time we experience suffering, we can think, May this be a cause for other beings not to experience this suffering may other beings’ suffering ripen on me as this suffering.
We can think in this way about things. We don’t necessarily have to do big visualizations, but we can get that. We can understand that aspect of it. So if we can approach every instance of suffering that we experience, and we experience many different types of suffering, we experience discomfort of mind, discomfort of body many of these things in our lifetimes, and different experiences. If every time we have one of these experiences, we can remind ourselves that that experience comes about because of negative karma ripening through the seeds that we’ve sown through self grasping and so forth.
If we can remind ourselves of this and think, Wow, I’m not the only one experiencing this. I’m not the only one experiencing suffering. Beings experience suffering as well, so they’re all experiencing this. May my suffering be a cause for them to experience less suffering. May their suffering ripen on me as this suffering I’m experiencing now.
If we do that, then think, well, that’s a good thing that I’m experiencing suffering and I can try and help others, then the actual experience of suffering becomes less, because we’re using our suffering in order to grow, in order to think, may I be able to experience more suffering for others?’ The actual suffering isn’t so much a negative thing because we can use it as a practice, and it’s also good in terms of creating good karma from a situation. Is that okay? Yeah. K. Is everyone alright?
Okay. Good. Oh, that’s me again. It’s like a