Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 38.9-minute meditation, Ven Sangye Khadro teaches Tonglen starting with your own problem—physical pain, emotional difficulty, relationship conflict—as a bridge to genuine compassion. She walks you through recognizing others who suffer the same or worse, then the core visualization: as you inhale, draw in the dark smoke of others’ suffering and crash it like lightning onto the selfish ego at your heart, shattering it completely. As you exhale, send white light transforming into whatever they need—food, healing, spiritual insight—until they become whole and happy. By using personal difficulty as practice ground, you gradually build the willingness and capacity to extend this compassion to others’ problems, reshaping habitual reactions to suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 4.05 Meditation 7_Tonglen for Self.mp3
UUID: 2fa28ad4-0412-4247-a298-a35f2ab776e8
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.9 minutes
Words: ~1,997
This is a meditation of Tonglen using one of our own problems, a problem we are experiencing. So start by sitting in a comfortable position, trying to keep your back straight so that your mind will be clear and focused. But letting the rest of your body be relaxed. Relax your muscles and let go of any tension you might have anywhere in your body. And relax your mind by letting go of any thoughts of the past or future or other places.
Any thoughts not related to the meditation that we are doing. And decide to just keep your mind in the present, here and now, focused on the meditation. And if any thoughts arise during the meditation, distracting thoughts, thoughts not related to the meditation, decide to put them aside and bring your mind back to the meditation each time it wanders away. Then generate a positive motivation for doing the meditation. You can think that you are doing it in order to create the causes to become enlightened to help all living beings.
Or if it’s more comfortable, you can think that you’re doing it to increase the positive qualities in your mind, decrease the negative ones like selfishness and ego. So that right now in your life you’ll be more helpful to others. Be able to give help to others and not give them problems. Not be a cause of unhappiness for others. Now before we do the actual practice of Tonglen, let’s spend some time meditating on and generating feelings of love and compassion.
Love is wishing happiness for others and compassion is wishing others to not suffer. One fairly simple way of generating these attitudes is to understand that others feel the same way that we do. Others want happiness and don’t want suffering just as we do. If we can get in touch with those attitudes in our own mind and then understand that others feel the same way, it’s easier to feel the wish for them to be free of suffering and to have happiness. So go into your mind, into your heart, and see if you can get in touch with this feeling or attitude that lies deep down inside of you.
This wish for happiness. It’s as if there’s a little voice inside that says, I just want to be happy. I want peace. I want happiness. I want well-being.
And I don’t want pain or unhappiness or suffering or problems. So see if you can recognize that feeling or attitude within your mind or within your heart. And when you do recognise it, don’t have a judgemental attitude thinking ‘I shouldn’t feel this way, that’s selfish. Shouldn’t care about myself’. It’s completely natural to feel this way and there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way because actually we should be happy, we deserve happiness and we shouldn’t have to suffer.
We deserve not to suffer. We deserve to be free of suffering. So see if you can acknowledge this wish for happiness and freedom from suffering. And feel it’s okay to feel this way, I should feel this way, and I really should be happy and I shouldn’t have to suffer. And now think that just as I feel this way, so does everyone else.
All other people, whether they’re male or female, old or young, attractive or not attractive, peaceful or agitated. Whoever they are, however they are, all people, because they have a mind, just as I do, they have this same feeling within their mind, within their heart. This feeling of wanting happiness and not wanting suffering. Contemplate that. See if you can understand that and experience that.
That everyone else feels this way as well. And then see if you can go one step further and feel that everyone deserves to be happy and deserves to not suffer. Nobody should have to experience pain or suffering or problems. Then see if you can feel how wonderful it would be if everyone, all people, all beings everywhere could have the happiness that they wish for and could be free from the suffering and pain and unhappiness that they wish to be free from. How wonderful that would be.
And then see if you can feel the wish to be more helpful to others. To be able to live your life in such a way, behave in such a way, act towards others in such a way that you give them more happiness, you bring more happiness to others and not give them suffering. That you are able to refrain from actions that are hurtful, harmful, causing suffering to others. If you can feel that wish, how wonderful that would be. And then see if you can understand that one of the biggest obstacles to being more helpful to others is the attitude of selfishness or self centeredness, where we’re more concerned with me, myself, than with others.
So this attitude of selfishness often stops us from reaching out to others, helping others, being generous and kind to others. Not only that, it sometimes leads us to act in ways that are hurtful to others, hurting them with our words, with our actions, or just treating them in a condescending or disrespectful way. So selfishness and other negative attitudes in our mind prevent us from being helpful to others and lead us to be harmful to others. So see if you can feel how wonderful it would be to be less selfish, to be able to decrease this attitude of selfishness, self centeredness, this attachment that we have to me, myself, my ego. So the practice of Tonglen is very powerful, very effective for decreasing this attitude of selfishness and increasing the opposite attitude of altruism, love and compassion and caring for others.
So this way of doing Tonglen involves using a problem we ourselves are experiencing, learning to take on one of our own problems. And by becoming more familiar with this practice, gradually we can reach the point where we are willing to take on someone else’s problem. So bring to mind some problem that you are currently experiencing in your life. It could be something physical, sickness or some disability that you have, or pain or discomfort in your body. Or it could be something more mental or emotional, feeling of depression or boredom, agitation, or bad temper.
Some kind of problem on the mental level that you would like to be free from. So you may have many problems, but just choose one. Focus on one. It could also be a problem in a relationship with another person, your partner or your boss or someone at work. It could be a financial problem.
Something you find difficult to bear, difficult to deal with in your life. And see if you can recognize how your attitude towards this problem is one of aversion. You feel like you would like to get rid of this problem. You want to push it away, make it non existent rather than accepting it, bearing it. But now think, I am not the only person in the world who has a problem like this.
There are many other people who have a similar problem. In some cases it may be equal to yours, but in some cases it could be even worse. See if you can think of people who have a similar problem to yours. And see if you can think of people who may have it even worse. Who have the same problem but to an even greater degree than you do.
Then generate compassion for those people. That means feeling or thinking. How wonderful it would be if all those people could be free from this problem. Understand that just as you don’t like this problem, would like this problem to disappear from your life, they feel the same way. They would also like to be free from this problem.
See if you can feel the wish for them to be free from this suffering, this problem. Feel compassion for them. And now, decide that you will accept or take on your own experience of this problem with a compassionate wish that by doing so, all those other people who have a similar problem could be free from theirs. So you can just say to yourself, ‘I will accept this problem, I will bear this problem, and by my doing so, may everyone else who has a similar problem be free. And if you wish, if you feel comfortable to do so, you can do this together with your breathing.
Imagine this problem that other people are experiencing in the form of smoke or fog. And imagine that as you inhale, you breathe in this dark energy. It comes into you. And imagine at your heart, that is your heart chakra in the centre of your chest, the selfish attitude, ego and self importance, self centeredness, and all the other negative attitudes that you have that lead you to harm others and not help them as much as you could. So these attitudes are there in your heart chakra in the form of some kind of object like a a rock or a sphere, some dark heavy object.
And then imagine that when you breathe in this dark smoke of others suffering, others problem, it comes into you and you can either imagine it absorbing into or crashing down on like a bolt of lightning onto this dark heavy rock of selfishness and negativity, ego at your heart, and making it completely non existent. It is destroyed, annihilated, smashed into atoms and then completely disappears. It becomes totally non existent. Then feel how wonderful it would be if you could give happiness and whatever else is needed by other people so that they can be free of their unhappiness and problems and have more peace and happiness. Feel the wish to give that to them.
That they may be endowed with these. Then imagine that as you exhale, you send out all your own good qualities, good karma, good energy, whatever good things you have within yourself, within your mind, within your life. Breathe that out in the form of very beautiful radiant white light. Rays of this light go out to those other people and transform into whatever they need. You can give them food to those who are hungry, homes to those who are homeless, loving, caring friends to those who are lonely, destitute.
And whatever else they may need to be comfortable and happy. You can imagine giving them positive qualities as well, such as courage and love and compassion and wisdom, intelligence, and clear mind to clear up confusion. And really imagine that they receive these things. They receive what they need in order to be happy. And they do become happy.
They become healthy and happy. Their minds become more clear and positive. And their lives change. They are able to sort out their problems and do what needs to be done so that they have good lives, happy, satisfying lives and good relationships with others and so on. So imagine them really becoming whole and healthy and happy.
And you can also imagine sending them all the knowledge and qualities and realizations that they need for their mind to progress along the spiritual path and ultimately attain the state of enlightenment, the fulfillment of their highest potential, the highest peace and happiness that’s possible. And finally, the positive energy of doing this meditation. That it will help to bring about a positive transformation of your mind, helping your mind to become less selfish, less egotistical, less negative, and more loving, compassionate, wise, and able to help others so that you can help others more in your present life, and make progress along the path, ultimately reaching enlightenment so that you can help other beings in the best possible way, especially helping them to reach enlightenment as well.