Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 39-minute teaching, Kyabje Rinpoche introduces tong-len (sending and taking), the core practice of thought transformation. He begins with the philosophical foundation: cultivating altruism paradoxically benefits oneself, while self-concern brings only harm. He then details the practice—visualizing black light as you inhale others’ suffering and causes, brilliant white light as you exhale happiness and virtue, progressing systematically from your own future sufferings to family, neutral people, enemies, and all sentient beings. Tong-len develops the love and compassion essential for bodhichitta (the awakening heart), which Rinpoche presents as the supreme method for purifying negative karma and achieving Buddhahood. He stresses that analytical meditation—rigorous reasoning and investigation—is essential; realization requires deliberate practice, never passive waiting. The teaching concludes with a guided five-minute meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1990-02-06 – 1B – KR.mp3
UUID: 2e9d515e-cd85-422e-9557-ca8e7c8f50db
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Sun Radiance – Thought Transformation
Date: 1990-02-06
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,096
This practice of altruism. In this there’s in taking this as our own practice, as our practice as of Dharma. There’s no other practice than this, that in developing this altruistic attitude and seeking to benefit others, that we will directly benefit others and indirectly bring about our own welfare. On the other hand, if we work for our own happiness only, then we will only cause ourselves and others harm. That it may appear superficially that seeking to bring it to to bring about a better situation for ourselves may bring us happiness.
But if we look deeper into this situation, we’re only causing harm both to ourselves and others. These practices of love and compassion, they can only benefit. They never harm either oneself or others. They never they can only bring happiness to oneself and others. On the other hand, working for our own welfare only.
Though we may be able to achieve some kind of temporal superficial happiness, Ultimately, in the future, we are bringing about our own suffering and harming others, and we continue to will continue to evolve in cyclic existence. The the qualities of a proficient spiritual practitioner proficient spiritual practitioner are such that between this life and future existences, the spiritual practitioner places greater emphasis on future existences between secular and nonsecular, the spiritual practitioner places greater emphasis on the nonsecular, on the Dharma as opposed to worldly. Between self and others, the spiritual practitioner emphasizes mainly others as most important. In the exchange of an equalizing self with others, we’re seeking to rid ourselves of self centeredness and to cultivate other centeredness. But we have been accustomed from beginning of this time up to now with self centeredness and therefore it comes again and again very, very powerfully.
We have to, in order to overcome this, we make use, we cultivate the practice of sending and taking as a means to develop other centeredness. We have to bring this, try to forcefully engage in this practice, cultivate this practice again and again and again in order to create as a method for developing the experience of other centeredness. So we’ve previously explained the practice of taking and sending and taking. We won’t go into that at present. Previously, it was explained that in sending, we give, we give, we send our body, our enjoyments, and the roots of all our constructive actions.
On the other hand, we take on the from other sentient beings, their suffering, the causes of their suffering, sicknesses, their destructive actions, any unwanted causes of suffering. So it is in the practice of taking and giving. First, it’s necessary to take, and we take on the suffering and the causes of suffering of other sentient beings in under the influence in in the context, under the influence of compassion, with compassion, compassionately. Then having taken on their suffering, then we lovingly, we give away our body, our roots of constructive actions, and our enjoyment and we are giving these to sentient beings. So it is said first to take from sentient beings and then to give.
That is to say first we take on their suffering and then we give away our happiness. If for example we were to reverse this order, it would be as in the case of if somebody were very sick and we even though we gave them delicious food, they wouldn’t be able to enjoy it because they were involved so much caught up in their suffering. Therefore, first, take on their suffering and then we give them our happiness. Happiness. In the practice of taking, because, you know, we’re seeking to train our mind, and we haven’t up to now trained our mind.
We’re not experienced in these practices. For example, in taking on suffering, and therefore, there may be arise some fear and take upon suffering, some uneasiness. So we begin with our own suffering. It’s definite that we have some negative karma and this negative karma is going to ripen in the future causing us suffering. So we begin to take on at the present moment the suffering we may we’re going to experience next year and the causes of that suffering.
So we take that on. We take on this suffering and the causes of suffering that we’re going to experience next month, tomorrow. We begin with this types of suffering because in order to train our mind. So when this practice goes well, we we’re proceeding and training our mind, then we begin to take on the suffering of, for example, our mother, our father, our very our relatives. And we move on to neutral people, strangers, and finally, enemies.
In this way, taking on the suffering of these different individuals as a means of training our mind. And then we train our mind in sending away happiness. We sending away, giving away our body, our constructive actions that we’ve created in the past, and our enjoyments. And this we send to our parents, for example, relatives, continuing our training to neutral individuals, strangers, then enemies, and finally, all sentient beings. So there is a verse in the in the practice, the extensive prayer practice, Lama Chöpa, or offering to the spiritual master in which one makes request to one’s spiritual master to aid one in one’s practice of exchanging and giving and exchanging and giving and taking.
And in this practice, first we take on we mount the giving and taking upon the breath. In the inhaling, first we take on the physical deformities, the physical difficulties deformities of of sentient beings in the form of black light which which enters and dissolves into our self centeredness. Then we give we we send out our our enjoyments. We send out a beautiful body in the form of a jeweled light, and it’s giving them a divine body. Then again inhaling all of the destructive actions of these sentient beings which act as the causes of suffering and this comes in through our nose and dissolves into our self centeredness.
Again, breathing out and breathing out a brilliant white light, which is the roots of all our constructive actions, bringing such that all sentient beings are completely filled with the causes of happiness, which are constructive actions. And then we continue the meditation in taking on now the all of the various faults of sentient beings in the form of this this black light which in the in all of the various faults, the knowledge obstructions, the obstructions which prevent omniscience and the entering and dissolving into our self centeredness. Then breathing out the brilliant white light which is all the various enjoyments that they might wish for food, clothing, everything that they could bring them happiness. And additionally sending them a spiritual master, a Lama, and various Dharma friends and giving teachings Finally, they achieved Buddhahood. So we meditate in this fashion, lovingly sending that is to say by lovingly accompanied with the wish may they have happiness.
Compassionately taking and that is to say by compassionately wishing that they be separated from suffering. And we mount this upon the breath giving and taking developing by sending develop our love greater and greater by taking we develop our compassion greater and greater and we couple these together and this brings about the this will bring about a very this will help us develop a very powerful type of love and compassion which act, from which will arise as an other centeredness or the cherishing of others. And depending upon this, we will develop the actual awakening heart. And by means of developing this awakening heart, we will as a supreme method of generating the the accumulation of merit or positive potential, necessary to achieve Buddhahood. What do we, you know, what do we really need, Basically, ultimately, we need to eliminate all our faults and to achieve all the excellent qualities.
That is to say we must achieve Buddhahood. This is this is our ultimate goal. And the ultimate method to bring this about is the awakening heart. In order to bring about the awakening heart, it is necessary that we develop love and compassion and if we practice, if we cultivate the practice of sending and taking, we will develop an extremely powerful compassion and love. But not only that, but the cause of our own suffering are negative actions that we have created.
And by means of developing love and compassion, we will purify all of these latent imprints of negative actions, which are the causes of suffering. And we will also bring about the causes of happiness, which are the cause of the great power of the constructive nature of love and compassion. So by engaging in such a practice, we bring about both the happiness of ourselves and others. We have accustomed ourselves. We have been training our mind in the development of confusion, jealousy, attachment, all of these negative emotions.
And, but, when we talk about mind training, thought transformation, we mean the creation of these excellent qualities of mind, as such love, compassion, the awakening heart. These are the practices of mind training. So we should we should carry on our practice like this in a in a very thoughtful manner, you know, reflecting upon the reality of what the way things are. This is the way to carry on a proper practice. We have to use really examine the nature of things and use our reasoning.
There are two types of meditation. There is analytical meditation and stabilizing meditation. Without engaging in analytical meditation, reasoning, thinking, searching, investigating, there no realizations are going to arise. No prime cognitions, no definite knowledge can arise. Just thinking that the realizations are going to arise with the coming of the sun or the turning like the turning on of the light is mistaken.
We have to cultivate using our understanding. We have to look into the way things are, investigate using reasoning, reflecting. And depending upon that, we will gain realization. So we should carry on our practice in this way, meditating, examining, and analyzing. In this way, definite understanding will arrive, a definite knowledge.
We we need to practice. We need to meditate. And if we do this, then we are going to definitely make progress along the path. If we don’t meditate, if we don’t train our mind, then there will be no progress. We can each we can daily see ourselves progressing, increasing in our understanding by carrying on a proper type of practice in this way.
So we’re going to take five minutes to actually meditate, cultivate, taking and sending. So beginning by taking on, and we we take on the there’s the sentient beings’ physical difficulties. Take then we take on their various destructive actions, are the causes of suffering, and taking on all their sufferings in general, and giving away a a a bodily happiness and giving our roots of our constructive actions which are the causes of happiness and finally giving them complete material and mental happiness in the form of food, clothing and taking. The third taking was taking on their obstructions or anything obstacles to achieving complete happiness. And the third giving, giving them their complete material and mental happiness, food, clothing, spiritual teachers, Dharma friends, until finally cultivating the path they achieve complete Buddhahood.
And then we we remain cultivating a sympathetic joy sharing in their happiness. So presently, it would be difficult for us to to seek to mount the taking and giving upon the breath. This takes some some time time for training to actually do this. Presently we won’t mount this practice on the breath, but simply take as and send without mounting it upon the breath. But eventually, as it has been said that that just the the the simply the the breath, the breathing process can be a matter of means of practicing and taking and sending.
We should take compassionately, that is with the with the thought that to separate these beings from their suffering, and we should send lovingly, that is, with the attitude of wishing these beings happiness. So in this manner, without mounting the practice on the breath, take on this suffering and give away happiness. Five minutes. In the next teachings, if you have the translation in English of the root text, the seven points of training the mind, you can bring that. We’ll photocopy some, Make them available.