Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Valham guides practitioners through tonglen, a Tibetan Buddhist practice of taking and giving meant to transform self-cherishing into compassion. The meditation begins with contemplating how all sentient beings, including one’s parents, are wandering lost in saṃsāra without guidance, suffering endlessly yet still seeking happiness. Recognizing that only Buddhas can truly help them, practitioners develop the resolve to become enlightened themselves. The core practice alternates breath: as you inhale, visualise drawing in others’ suffering as a laser beam that demolishes your self-grasping; as you exhale, radiate your virtues as light, transforming into exactly what each being needs. Valham systematically guides this through parents and loved ones, then expands it outward to address hunger, war, disease, and ignorance across the world. The meditation culminates in purifying all dualistic mind, transforming into a Buddha, and envisioning a pure realm where all beings attain awakening. A closing dedication seals the intention. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with Mahāyāna Buddhist concepts of bodhicitta and enlightenment for all beings.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 Tonglen.mp3
UUID: 9d984574-a36b-4deb-a377-b72a13c041e8
Teacher: Valham
Collection: Guided LR Meditation (Valham)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~1,576
To begin the practice, we think and remember universal living beings, and how they are our kind mother sentient beings. Not only this life, mother and father, but when you think of universal living beings, you can think my kind mothers and fathers. You know, recognizing, remembering the countless times, and they have cared for me just in the same way as the present mother and father. At the same time, they are experiencing, you know, numberless problems, pains, and sufferings. Completely lost in saṃsāra.
On top of that, my kind mothers are without guidance. You know, not having found reliable guidance, not having generated faith in a spiritual path, So completely lost, you know. Wanting happiness, all of them wanting happiness, but continuously creating the causes of just suffering. So try to think how they are aimlessly wandering in saṃsāra, including your present mother and father. As if the living beings were blind and walking towards a precipice a million miles deep.
You know, if it was our own mother and father walking towards the precipice, we couldn’t bear it. We would have to rush to protect our mother. In the same way, try to feel, I’m only one person. The happiness of the multitude of living beings is much more important than one person’s comforts and pleasures. So thinking I must do something, what can we do to protect the sentient beings from suffering?
We don’t have the power at present. We don’t have the skills. So who has this power and skill to benefit the sentient beings, to guide the sentient beings properly, you know, without making mistakes, without harming others. That is only the Buddhas and higher bodhisattvas who have the clairvoyance and the skillful means. So thinking I must become a Buddha, I must develop my mind to become a great bodhisattva, a dedicated being.
There’s no choice. There’s no other way to save mother sentient beings. To become a Buddha, I need to develop bodhicitta. I need to begin with begin by developing great compassion. The wish to relieve all sentient beings from their sufferings, you know, from their problems, from their pain, frustrations.
And to have genuine compassion, that depends on first developing love. The kind of love that wants to see everyone happy. That kind of heartfelt affection for others, feeling others close, feeling others inside one’s heart. Now to try to develop this genuine loving kindness, compassionate feeling in order to nourish our bodhicitta, let’s practice the giving and taking, giving our happiness, taking the sufferings from others. So all this is for their main purpose of developing our own love and compassion.
It’s done without expectation of external success. It doesn’t mean that we change conditions externally, but we are trying to change our own mind to nourish and develop our own qualities. So you can do it completely without fear, without worry. Just recognize your own ego grasping, and when the self-cherishing develops fear, you have hit the right point actually. And you try to as we inhale, we think that we take away the sufferings of others, and at the same time bombard our own self-cherishing attitude in the center of our chest, where it has built a nest and feels very secure.
This time we bombard it with the energy of suffering from others, transformed into a laser beam that chips away on one’s own self-cherishing thought, the main obstacle for developing bodhicitta. Then when we exhale, we think we give all our happiness, virtue, merits, good fortune in the form of light, like the sunlight, and that transforms into whatever other beings wish, both temporary and ultimate happiness. So let’s begin with our parents and dear ones, making it easier to expand it and include others. So first, bring your mother and father close to you. Mother on the right, if you like.
Mother on the left, father on your right. And also friends and dear ones. Then focus on one at a time, beginning with your mother. Focus on her for a while and remember her hardships, you know, her problems and difficulties, her fears and anxieties. Try to feel it very strongly.
Then slowly you inhale, holding it for a moment and imagining the suffering turning into a laser beam, chipping away on your self-cherishing thought that is like a rock or like a piece of iron inside your chest. And as you exhale, you send much light energy, transforming to exactly what she needs, whether it be health, peace, physical or mental well-being, and totally embrace her with love and compassion. Continue taking from her until you feel a sense of transformation. Then continue with your father. Remember his problems, his worries.
Whether he is alive today or not alive, you think you take his suffering, his ignorance, completely comes like a powerful laser beam chipping away or exploding, blasting the self-cherishing within our own heart, opening our heart. As you exhale, you give him your virtues and goodness that transforms into everything he needs and into the ultimate path to awakening, totally purifying his mind. And you think that your mother, father, and as you continue with your dear ones, your friends, you think that they attain everything they wish and that you have accomplished this. Now think for a moment that you have fulfilled all the wishes of your mother, father, your dear ones, and that they’re experiencing true happiness, true lasting happiness. Now think about the rest of the world, bringing all living beings around you, feeling the space on the earth, and each undergoing their own particular suffering.
So focus first on the suffering of hunger and thirst that people are experiencing, people and animals are experiencing various parts of the world, in Africa, in Korea, the places that you know about. And people are experiencing the general suffering of hunger and thirst, never having enough. Imagine that you inhale that suffering. It hits the self-cherishing thought, chipping away on it, making it smaller and smaller. And as we exhale, we offer a banquet of delicious food and drink, completely satisfying the hunger and thirst of humans and animals and others.
Then continue thinking about the hardships of war, strife, torture, pain, separation that beings are experiencing, again, in so many places on this earth. Focus on their pain. Imagine that you relieve them of the pain by inhaling it. It becomes a powerful force, eliminating our own self-cherishing mind, concerned mainly with ourselves, putting ourself as number one and the most important. This time, we try to eliminate this demon in our heart, and instead turn it around, exhale all your goodness and heal the wounds of all the suffering, humans and nonhumans, pacify conflicts, calm aggression, and eliminate all wars in the world as you exhale.
Then thirdly, we can also think about the sickness and the suffering of pain, like the sickness of leprosy, TB, cancer and AIDS. And you think of the people that suffer those sicknesses, the fear, the not knowing, the pain, and you think you inhale that suffering, destroying the self-cherishing completely. Then exhale healing powers, healing and soothing the pains and the suffering, that the living beings are completely restored, health restored, happiness restored. Let’s contemplate like that for a while. Now again, lastly, let’s imagine that we take all the suffering or ignorance from all the living beings, mother, father, friends, strangers, universal living beings.
Imagine that you relieve the sentient beings from ignorance. You inhale it. It becomes the final blow to the self-cherishing in the chest. It completely disappears and totally opens our heart equally towards all universal living beings. And we give all our happiness, virtue, goodness in the form of light or wisdom to all living beings.
And you imagine that every single living being becomes completely filled with wisdom, compassion, and power. You yourself transforms into a Buddha, having purified, liberated all the living beings. Then from your heart, you send out emanations. Billions of Buddhas goes into the ten directions. Sentient beings cluster around the Buddhas, joyfully receiving the teachings, practicing, and you think that the entire world transforms into a pure realm.
Again, you take the subtle dualistic mind, and you yourself attain complete full awakening in a form of Śākyamūni Buddha. And all the universal living beings enjoy the pure Dharma and attain the same awakened state, experiencing true everlasting happiness. When you think this, rejoice and feel so happy that you are able to think in this way, that you are able to awaken all living beings. Now as a conclusion and dedication, let’s think. May all living beings have happiness and become completely free from suffering of all kinds.
May all living beings have happiness that is especially sublime, and may we all live in equanimity, recognizing the equality of all living beings. And may we ourselves bring this about, even by ourselves alone. May we develop the sublime thought of bodhicitta, the loving compassionate thought, quickly in this life. May we be able to follow our Mahāyāna guru perfectly without making even the slightest mistake. May we never separate from life to life.
And may we all attain the most sublime state, able to benefit all living beings according to their needs, according to their wishes, according to their capacities. And may we eliminate even the word suffering from this world due to these merits.