Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 56-minute meditation, Ven Pende Hawter teaches two complementary practices for opening the heart and developing compassion. He begins with a foundational loving-kindness meditation that guides the body into deep relaxation through breath awareness, then visualizes healing white light filling the entire body and radiating outward—first to loved ones, then to difficult people, the suffering sick, the hungry, the lonely and depressed, the war-torn and imprisoned, and finally back to oneself. He then teaches Tonglen, the giving-and-taking practice, where practitioners breathe in the black smoke of suffering from all beings while visualizing shattering the self-cherishing rock at the heart, then breathe out white light of happiness, healing, and spiritual teachings. Throughout, he emphasizes that this practice is profoundly transformative, especially when applied to one’s own illness or difficulty—by offering one’s suffering so others may be free. Suitable for practitioners at any level, though best with quiet, uninterrupted time.
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File: Loving Kindness and Opening the Heart.mp3
UUID: 5704d314-e615-4e14-8f80-f44c0aceabdd
Teacher: Ven Pende Hawter
Collection: Loving Kindness and Opening the Heart (Ven Pende Hawter)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 56.8 minutes
Words: ~4,474
So to begin this meditation, we make sure that the body is in a comfortable position. This can be either in the sitting position or in the lying position. Just whatever position is comfortable for you. Whatever position that you can feel relaxed, comfortable, free of tension, free of tiredness. So just allowing the arms and legs to rest comfortably.
Allow the head rest comfortably on the pillow or to sit comfortably on the shoulders, not too far forwards or back. Allow the eyes to gently close or to just be partly opened. Just leaving behind all of your external activities and turning the mind inwards. Just allowing the mind to become calm and still. So to the to do this, we just focus the mind on the breath, just becoming aware of the ingoing and outgoing of the breath at the level of the nostrils.
Just simply breathing in, breathing out, and being aware of that gentle rhythm and flow of the breath. Just breathing normally, naturally, easily. No need to force or exaggerate the breath. Just simply allow it to move normally, but with awareness of that gentle rhythm and flow of the breath inwards and outwards. As the thoughts arise in the mind, just let them go and just constantly bring the mind back into awareness of the breathing, Being aware of the in breath, being aware of the out breath, being aware of the pauses between the in and out breaths.
It helps to keep the mind on the breath. You can just say to yourself, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out. Or perhaps you can try counting the breath, say, in batches of ten breaths. Just counting up to ten breaths and then going back, starting again from one. Just allowing the mind to become focused, concentrated on the breathing.
Then just scanning through the body to look for any areas of tension or tightness or discomfort. And as you become aware of those feelings, just allow them to fall away from the body, dissolve away into space, allowing each part of the body in turn to become relaxed and still and free of tension, free of tiredness. So just starting from the feet and the legs, just gradually moving up from the feet and through the calves, the thighs, gradually moving up through the area of the pelvis and the stomach and low back. Moving up through the area of the chest, between the shoulder blades. Down through the arms to the hands, just letting go of all tension, all tightness, all feelings of discomfort.
Checking out through the area of the neck and the shoulders, and finally up through the area of the face and the scalp, allowing the forehead to become smooth and relaxed, the eyes relaxed almost to the point where they close, allowing the jaws to relax with the teeth slightly apart. Just allowing all tension, all tightness to completely dissolve away from the body, allowing the relaxation to completely pervade all parts of the body. So now with the body feeling relaxed with the mind, feeling concentrated. Just above the crown of your head, visualize a small, intense ball of brilliant white light. If you have some spiritual feelings, some religious inclination, if you wish you can see this ball of light being in the nature of Jesus or Mary or Buddha or whatever other spiritual figure has some real meaning for you.
Or if you prefer, just seeing the the light just in the form of a ball of light. And the light is streaming out in all directions. And that ball of light slowly dissolves through the crown of your head, slowly moves down into the center of your chest. And here, it can be helpful just to visualize the body as being hollow inside, just like a hollow tube surrounded by the skin. Just in your mind’s eye, trying to see this visualization as clearly as possible.
And then the light starts to spread out to all parts of the body. Spreads up into the head, completely filling the head, Slowly moves down through the arms to the hands. Moves down through the trunk, and then slowly down the legs all the way down to the feet. Just feeling this white light completely going through all parts of the body, completely pervading all parts of the body. The light feels warm, gentle, calm.
This light representing all of the healing energies of the universe, all of the love and compassion of all of the holy beings, all the love and compassion that exists within the universe, being drawn into your body in the form of this white healing light, healing, loving light. The whole body from head to toe, every cell in the body being filled with this white light. Just feel this light pervading every cell in the whole body. And this light completely dissolves away all tension, all tightness, all discomfort, all aches and pains, all sickness, all of the worries, fears, anxieties, hassles, problems, all of these completely dissolved away by this brilliant, white, healing, calming light. And this light of love and compassion completely softens the heart, opens up the heart, generating within you a feeling of great love, kindness, compassion, softness, gentleness, filling you with great energy, strength, health, filling you with the abilities, opening up all of your potentials to do whatever you want to do, to become whatever you want to become, opening you up to your unlimited potential, your unlimited abilities.
But in particular, opening you up to the unlimited love and compassion that exists within you, filling you with all the love, all the compassion of the universe. Just staying with that feeling of peace, openness, calmness, stillness, clarity. Just letting go completely into that feeling of peace, clarity, love. All limitations and problems completely dissolved away. The heart completely open, completely still.
Your whole body just pervaded and surrounded by this white light, this light of love and healing. So then now just thinking of somebody who’s very close to you, very dear to you, and then sending that light from your heart to that person, bringing them everything that they want, dissolving away from them all problems, all difficulties. Then extending that thought to your family, your friends, your relatives. And sending that light to them again with the wish that they may have every happiness, that they may have every happiness that they want, that they may be free of all suffering. Making a strong wish and then sending the light out to them.
And then just thinking of those people that you dislike or that you have problems with, that you have some long standing problem with, unfinished business, disagreement. And, again, send out the light to them because they need it just as much as your friends and relatives. Just like us, those people want to be happy and want to be free of suffering. So, again, sending out that light of love and forgiveness to your enemies, to those who disturb your mind with the wish that they may be happy and they may be free of suffering also, just as we would wish these things for ourself, for ourselves. And just think of those people you know who are undergoing some form of mental or physical sickness at the moment, some hardship, some difficulty, those who are suffering.
And send out the white light of love and healing to them, Again, wishing them to be happy, wishing them to be free of suffering. Just sending out the light to them. This light which exists abundantly within you. This limitless light within you, just sending out to them. Extending your thoughts to all those people in this country and all other countries who are in hospitals or mental institutions, all those who are sick and suffering mentally and physically.
And again, send out the light to them, just expanding the light more and more, spreading it out to all people in all parts of the world who are sick and suffering. Now just thinking of all those millions of people in the world who are hungry, live in poverty, the starving children, and again, send out the light of love and peace to them. Again, generating the strong wish that they may be happy, that they may have the basic requisites that they need for their survival, for their happiness, that their suffering may be completely eradicated. Just generating the strong feeling and sending out the light to them. Thinking now of the countless people in the world who are feeling lonely, depressed.
Perhaps in the West, this is the biggest disease, the despair of loneliness and depression and sadness. Think how much we don’t like to have those feelings of sadness, loneliness, depression, despair. Think of all the old people living on their own, who are so lonely, find it so difficult. Sending out the light of love and healing to all those people. Again, generating a strong wish that they may be free of suffering, free of loneliness, depression, sadness, and that they may experience happiness, joyfulness.
And just thinking of all those in the world who are caught up in conflicts, wars, disputes, the many people in the world who live in oppression, who live in regimes that suppress basic human rights, who spend their lives living in fear of what might happen to them or what might happen to their relatives. Those who live in a constant state of anxiety and fear for their welfare. Sending out the white light of love and compassion to them, to all those caught up in conflicts, all the oppressed, and also sending light to the oppressors because they need the love and understanding as much as those that are oppressed. Thinking of all those in the world who are in prison. Who don’t have the understanding or the knowledge of what is right, of what is wrong.
And, again, sending the light of love and understanding and compassion to them, that, again, they may be free of their suffering and experience happiness. And then finally, sending that light out to yourself, that light of love, compassion, healing. Just imagine that light going out from your heart and then coming back into yourself like a boomerang. So sending the light to yourself, the light of love, understanding, acceptance, accepting yourself with all of your limitations, problems, being gentle and compassionate to your own being, to your own self, sending the love and kindness to yourself. Because to love and accept others, then we have to first to love and accept ourselves with our weaknesses, our limitations, by recognizing our potentials.
Just completely dwelling in that feeling of lightness and clarity and peace and understanding and gentleness. Just letting go into that feeling as much as you can. Also developing the strong intention, the strong determination that just as in this meditation, we’ve opened up our heart to all others, all those in the world who are suffering just as we suffer, just as we want to be happy and don’t want to suffer, just thinking of all the others who want to be happy and don’t want to suffer just like ourselves. So having the determination that we, at all times, will try and keep our heart open, that we’ll try and remember the suffering of others, the despair of others, always keeping our heart open to others, always trying to do what we can to help others, to relieve them of their pain and suffering. So now just bring the mind back to the breath, once more becoming aware of the ingoing and outgoing of the breath, the level of the nostrils.
And then just do your own time, coming back into awareness of the room, of your surroundings, and just slowly opening your eyes, sitting up. And in your own time, you can just carry on with your normal activities. This meditation is a meditation on compassion, a meditation on developing the mind of compassion and to overcome selfish states of mind. It’s often known as the giving and taking meditation, or in Tibetan, Tonglen. So just to prepare for the meditation, just make sure that you are in a comfortable position, either sitting or lying, Just in the position that you can maintain comfortably for the next twenty five or thirty minutes.
Make sure that your clothing is loose and comfortable. Ideally, you won’t be disturbed over these next few minutes, where you can just turn the mind inwards and continue with the meditation in an undisturbed manner. Just making sure that the body is feeling comfortable. Becoming aware of any particular parts of the body where tension or discomfort or pain may be. Scanning systematically through the body to look for any of those particular areas of tension or discomfort.
As you become aware of those feelings, allow those areas to soften, relax. Allow those feelings to dissolve away into space, so that each part of the body feels comfortable and relaxed, and free of all tension and all tightness. Just allowing the mind to turn inwards to the relaxation process to prepare for the meditation. Becoming aware of the inner state of body and mind. Just putting aside any concerns of outside problems, worries, fears, the busyness of the day, Just allow the mind to be relaxed, calm, still.
And to help to still the mind, just bring the mind to the breath. Become aware of the movement of the breath inwards and outwards at the level of the nostrils. Just breathing normally, naturally, easily without forcing or struggling with the breath. Just simply observing the natural rhythm and flow of the breath at the level nostrils as it moves inwards and outwards. If it helps, just saying to yourself breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out, or some other words that helps to keep the mind focused on the breathing.
Or perhaps try counting the breath, say in batches of ten breaths. Just allowing body and mind to be calm, still, free of all tension, all tiredness. So as I said at the beginning, this meditation is a meditation to help develop compassion, to develop the mind that thinks of others, and to develop the brave or courageous mind that is willing to take on, to visualize taking on the suffering of others in order that they may be free of suffering. This meditation really is a continuation or a development of the loving kindness meditation, which I’ve done on the other side of this tape. Often people find the thought of doing this meditation, the actual concept, a little bit unpleasant.
They think that if they visualise taking on the suffering of others, that it may actually increase their own suffering, their own sickness. But in fact it has the opposite effect, that by thinking of others and wanting to relieve their suffering, that it actually takes our mind off our own problems and sort of opens up our heart to think of others. It actually makes the mind feel much more open, less tense, It opens up the mind and the heart to the suffering of others. In this particular meditation, we visualise taking on the suffering of others in the form of black smoke. And we also visualise because in order to develop compassion we have to remove any selfishness in our own minds and our own hearts.
Then we have to we visualise a black rock of self-cherishing in the centre of our chest. Just visualise like this small rock of selfishness, black rock of selfishness in the centre of our chest. What happens in the meditation is as we take on the suffering of others, that selfless thought, shatters the rock of self-cherishing in our chest and completely gets rid of it. In particular, if you are suffering from a particular illness or disease or problem, whatever it might be, whether it’s a physical illness like cancer or AIDS, whether it’s a mental problem like depression, sadness, loneliness, tiredness, then you visualise taking on that problem from everybody else with the same problem in the world. So as you breathe in, visualize that all of the suffering, all of the problems of others is drawn in through your nostrils, down into your heart in the form of black smoke.
And often here it can be helpful to systematically think of different groups of people. You might think of a group of people with the same problem you have, and you might expand that to think of other people with different sorts of problems. So you can think of your relatives and friends and any problems they may have. You might think of other people who are sick with the same problems you have. You may think of other people in hospitals with mental or physical problems.
You can think of people caught up in wars and conflicts around the world. Think of all the people who are starving and hungry. And so you can just use your own mind, your own imagination, your own thoughts to extend out this meditation further and further to all the different groups that you can think of. Have different types of suffering, mental suffering, physical suffering. Each time you breathe in you draw in the suffering of these other people in the form of black smoke.
Just visualise now that as you think of these different groups of people, you take on their suffering. You take their suffering from them in the form of black smoke. With each in breath taking on that black smoke of suffering. You’re taking on all of the sufferings of all of the others, other living beings who are suffering. Take on all of their suffering and all the causes of their suffering, which is the negative states of mind, the negative karmas, the negative states of mind that create the suffering.
And then as you take in this this black smoke, as it hits the black rock of self-cherishing or selfishness at your heart, it completely shatters it. That black rock of selfishness at your heart completely disintegrates, completely shatters, and disappears to the ends of the universe, just disappears into space. Then if you have some sort of feeling, some sort of understanding of the Buddhist concept of emptiness. You just reflect on the emptiness of yourself, the selfishness, the other beings, and just reflect how all of them are merely labelled on the base, how none of them have any inherent existence. They are all completely empty like space.
Just allow yourself to dwell in that feeling of spaciousness, emptiness, peace. And having eradicated the selfishness from the heart, having taken on the suffering of others, then we want to replace that suffering with all good things, all things that people want. Health, happiness, all the material things they want, and in particular, giving them a true spiritual path that can enable them to permanently overcome their problems and obtain a state of lasting, permanent happiness, a state of complete and permanent freedom from suffering. So then as we breathe out, we visualise breathing out all of those things health, happiness, peace, material comforts, and the spiritual teachings in the form of white light. As the white light reaches and touches all of those people, all of those beings that we took the suffering from originally, it brings them all of those things that they want: every happiness, health, peace.
So then now we combine the giving and the taking of suffering, the giving of love and peace and happiness. We combine that giving and taking on the breath. So as we breathe in, we take on the suffering and the causes of suffering of all of those people, all of those beings. And as we breathe out, we breathe out the white light, which brings happiness, and the causes of happiness, which is the spiritual teachings. So we breathe in black smoke, breathe out the white light, Take their suffering and then give them every happiness.
So just in your own time now, just for the next few minutes, just visualise the giving and taking meditation. Just visualize the taking on the suffering in the form of black smoke, giving out the happiness, the love, the peace, the teachings in the form of white light. I personally find it helpful for concentration is that as you do the in and out breath, you just mentally say to yourself the meaning of the different breaths. So as you breathe in, say to yourself, taking suffering and the causes of suffering, and as you breathe out, just say to yourself, giving happiness and the cause of happiness, the teachings. You can systematically do this with different groups of people in society, or you can even do it through the different countries, the different continents, just whatever way suits your own mind.
Then just allowing your whole being now to be filled with this white light of loving kindness, compassion, the mind that wishes all beings to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, the mind of great compassion. Just allow your whole body and mind to be filled with the white light, the white light of infinite compassion. It’s said that the greatest meditation, the greatest method of healing, is to be able to generate this mind of compassion, to have the thought wishing to, or being prepared to take on the suffering of others in order that they may be free of suffering. And so it can be very helpful as a corollary to this meditation, just to try and generate the thought for any problem you might have, whether it’s a sickness like AIDS or cancer, or whether it’s some sort of mental problem, or even something as small as a headache or a toothache. Than to use that particular problem to think of the suffering of others.
So if you have something, say a headache, then just generating the thought, trying to have the thought, by me experiencing this headache, may all other people in the world, may all other beings in the world be free of headache. By me having this cancer, may all other beings in the world be free of cancer. It’s said that you can even extend this to the point where you’re actually perhaps approaching death, where you’re actually dying. And you can actually say, by me experiencing this dying process, may all other beings in the world be free of the fears and the pain and the discomfort of death, of dying. So it’s like voluntarily going through this process in order to that others may be free of these difficulties.
And so to have that thought that has the understanding that what I’m experiencing is not my pain, but the pain. The pain of the whole world, the pain that everybody else has to experience when they go through this same sort of problem. So this thought, this willingness to take on the suffering and the problems of others is said to be the greatest healer, the greatest healing meditation. And the reason for this is that it opens up the heart, the mind, it makes the heart more open to the suffering of others, expansive. And it causes a lot of peace in the mind.
It brings peace to the mind because instead of being totally caught up in your own suffering, your own problem, then your mind is going out to others. Many people, when they’ve been very sick, perhaps even with terminal illness, When they’ve done this sort of meditation, when they’ve developed this sort of thinking, then it’s created a great transformation, a great peace, a great acceptance in the mind. So it’s an immensely powerful type of meditation, type of process. The more we can do that, then the more benefit it brings to the mind. Normally we would start to train ourselves with minor problems, as I said, things like a headache, a toothache, perhaps some minor problem in the family or something like that.
Then through training ourselves in this way, we can then use this technique for much bigger problems, such as major illnesses or major life problems. We discover that as we continue to do this, and as we develop in this practice, that it has a very profound effect on the mind. And not only can result in a healing of the presenting problem, but can also result in a deep psychological, spiritual healing as well. To gain the understanding that the suffering that we experience is part of universal suffering, And that right at this minute, there are countless other people, countless other beings who are experiencing exactly what we’re experiencing, that we are not alone. And so then we, in effect, offer up our suffering, or willingly accept our suffering, our problem, in order that all others may be free of it.
To do this requires a great deal of courage. It takes a brave mind to willingly take on the suffering of others when oneself is faced with a difficult problem. But the more we try, the more we can train our minds in this way, then the more we can overcome our problems and transform our problems into the spiritual path. So this technique of giving and taking, of developing this mind of compassion, is an exceptionally powerful tool for transforming, for bringing all of our problems into the spiritual path. No matter what we experience, no matter what difficulties, no matter what sickness, then from it we can gain a very meaningful purpose from it, a great use for it.
Instead of becoming a problem, a disaster, it becomes a tremendous incentive, a tremendous boost to our spiritual practice, because we’ve got something so powerful to work with. Many of the people we’ve met over the years have said that their AIDS, their cancer, has been a great blessing. They regard it as a great blessing because it’s just opened up this whole new dimension to them. It’s given them a chance to reevaluate their lives. It’s given them a chance to develop this mind of compassion, this open heart towards everybody else who’s suffering or sick.
And so no matter what problem you might have, whatever difficulties you might be experiencing, then I’d strongly urge you to attempt this practice. And I’m sure that some great benefit, significant benefit, will come from it, that will somehow bring some degree of peace, acceptance to the mind. This now ends the meditation and for the next minute or two to conclude this tape, there will just be some music playing.