Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron guides a step-by-step taking and giving meditation designed to reverse habitual self-centred patterns and cultivate bodhisattva intention. Practitioners visualise absorbing others’ suffering and its causes as dark smoke, transforming it into lightning that destroys their own self-preoccupation and disturbing attitudes. They then radiate brilliant white light outward, multiplying and giving their body, possessions, and positive potential to meet each being’s needs for both material and spiritual happiness. After this exchange, Chodron guides the generation of the great resolve — a voluntary commitment to work for all beings’ liberation — and closes with cultivation of the aspiration to achieve full enlightenment as the most effective way to accomplish that aim. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with bodhisattva ideals.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 38 GM.mp3
UUID: 40ce740b-f790-4756-b76c-b37122862bfc
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~998
When we meditate on love and compassion very deeply, there arises the very strong wish to be able to take on other suffering and experience it ourselves so that they can be free of it and to give others our happiness so that they can enjoy it. So this attitude of taking the problems and giving away our happiness is completely opposite to our usual mode of being. But when we meditate strongly on love and compassion, this feeling easily arises. So we’re going to do the taking and giving meditation now in which you may imagine taking on the suffering of others, which is what they don’t want, and transforming it so that it destroys the cause of our own suffering, our own disturbing attitudes and karma, which is what we don’t want. And in this meditation also, we’re going to imagine multiplying and transforming our body, our possessions, and even our positive potential and giving it out to all other living beings so that it brings them happiness.
There’s many ways to do this taking and giving meditation. You can think of one person. You can think of many people. You can think of each realm of beings one by one. But just so that you get some familiarity with it.
So visualize either an individual or a group of people and really think of the suffering that they’re undergoing. Think of what it’s like to be them actually experiencing that. Think of specific people. Now as you think of those people and have that strong feeling of compassion for them, imagine that all their suffering and their causes of suffering leaves them in the form of very polluted smoke. And with a real sense of compassion, you inhale that smoke.
You take that upon yourself thinking, may I experience their suffering so that they can be free of it? And as their suffering leaves them and comes into you, it turns into a lightning bolt that then crashes into the lump at your heart. And that lump at your heart is all of your own disturbing attitudes and self centeredness. So we not only take on their suffering, but we use it to destroy the cause of our own. And as this lightning bolt crashes into the lump of our own disturbing attitudes and self preoccupation, it blows them up so that they’re completely destroyed.
And at your heart, there’s just incredible open space, incredible freedom, and the tyranny of the self centered thought and the disturbing attitude. And so just stay in that empty space. And feel how wonderful it is too that the other people who are suffering are free of their suffering, that you were able to take it from them and that they’re free of that. Then imagine very brilliant white light radiating from your heart. That white light is your love for those beings, which now effortlessly radiates out towards them.
And imagine that you’re able to give your body, that you want to give your body away, and that you can transform it and multiply it so that it becomes whatever they need. So if they need material things, your body transforms into that. If they need certain people in their lives, your body transforms into that. And so multiply and transform your body and give it to those people so that it becomes whatever they need for happiness, both the temporal and the ultimate happiness. Then think of how wonderful it would be to give all your possessions and your money away.
Imagine multiplying and transforming them, and they go out and become whatever these people need. Both things that make them happy in cyclic existence and things that can lead them on the path to enlightenment. And then give you and your positive potential away. So all the merit, the good karma that you created with a lot of effort without clinging onto it for your own benefit, multiply it, transform it, and imagine that it goes out to these people, and it becomes all the conducive circumstances for them to be able to practice the Dharma. And so imagine that they have teacher and teachings and a supportive group and a good environment.
And imagine that they’re able to generate all the realizations of the path and have a very joyful mind as they practice. And imagine that because of this, they become Buddhist. And after we do the taking and giving meditation, we also generate the great resolve. And since what we want more than anything is for others to be free of suffering and to have happiness, especially after we’ve done the taking and giving meditation, Then with the great resolve, we’re willing to take upon ourself the responsibility to make that happen. So generate that feeling inside of taking on the responsibility voluntarily of working to bring about happiness for all living beings and to eliminate all their suffering.
So we may have this very strong resolve for others to be happy and to lead them from their suffering. But when we ourselves are limited, it becomes very difficult to actualize that. So in order to be able to work for the benefit of others most effectively, we have to free our own mind from its disturbing attitudes and from its self preoccupation. So we have to become a fully enlightened Buddha if we’re really gonna be able to work most effectively for what the most important thing in our life is, the benefit of others. And so generate that very strong wish to become a fully enlightened Buddha so that you can work for the benefit of others most effectively.
And as you generate that wish to become a Buddha, think I’m never going to give up this altruistic intention. No matter what happens, no matter how others treat me, This is the most important thing from now on in all of my lives, and I’m never going to give it up.