Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 22-minute guided meditation, Ven Sangye Khadro teaches tonglen for others—breathing in another’s suffering and breathing out relief. She opens by settling the mind and setting compassionate motivation, then walks you through bringing to mind someone struggling with physical pain, illness, or emotional hardship. The core visualization pairs your own delusions—ego and selfishness—as a dark rock at your heart with the other person’s suffering as dark smoke. As you inhale, you draw their suffering in; it strikes and destroys the rock, freeing both of you. On the exhale, you send bright white light transforming into what they need: food, comfort, respect, peace, and inner qualities. Accessible and emotionally grounded for practitioners familiar with compassion practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 5.03 Meditation 9_Tonglen for Others.mp3
UUID: 43539ada-a840-40ab-b2d5-f3380a97c185
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 22.8 minutes
Words: ~802
Begin the meditation by making yourself comfortable. Sit with your back straight, but other than your back being straight, let the other parts of your body be relaxed. Let go of any tension you might have anywhere in your body. And let go of thoughts that you might have in your mind of the past or the future or anything not related to the meditation. Put aside all these thoughts.
Decide to keep your mind focused on the meditation and bring your mind back to it whenever it gets distracted. And then generate a positive motivation for doing the meditation. Think that you’re doing it in order to create the causes for happiness and peace for yourself and others, and to overcome the causes of suffering and problems for yourself and others. And if you can also think that you’re doing it to create the causes for the highest state of enlightenment so that you can be of benefit to all other beings, then that’s actually the best motivation to have for doing the meditation. And now think of a person that you know and love, care about, who is going through some kind of problem at this point in time.
It could be something physical, illness, or perhaps they are dying, or some kind of disability or pain. Or it could be something emotional. They may be depressed or angry or anxious or having a problem with a relationship or at work. So bring to mind one person who is suffering. And then imagine that person in front of you.
Contemplate that just like you, this person wants to be happy and does not want to suffer. Try to really feel that. Put yourself in this person’s situation. Put yourself in their shoes. And try to really feel the suffering that they are experiencing and how they wish to be free of it.
Generate compassion for this person. Feel how wonderful it would be if they could be free from their suffering and problems. And then see if you can go one step further and generate the courageous wish that you could take away this person’s suffering and take it upon yourself so that they could be free of it. And now visualize that your disturbing negative thoughts and emotions such as ego and selfishness, anger and hatred, attachment and greed, jealousy and so forth are in the form of a solid dark rock at your heart. And then visualize your loved ones suffering in the form of thick, dark smoke floating out of their body.
As you inhale, imagine taking this dark smoke of suffering into yourself. It comes to your heart, absorbs into the rock of self centeredness and delusions and completely destroys it. Both the rock and the suffering, your own and that of the other person, become utterly non existent. Now feel a sense of joy that this person is now free from his or her suffering and problems. And now generate the feeling of love or loving kindness for this person, wishing them to have happiness, to have everything they need for their health and well-being and comfort and peace of mind happiness.
And feel the wish that you could give them happiness, you could give them whatever they need, whatever they wish for in order to be happy. Now when you exhale, breathe out your own happiness, positive qualities, positive energy, all the good things that you have in the form of bright white light. Imagine rays of white light going out and transforming into whatever this person needs to be happy, to have peace of mind. So you can think of the most basic things like the food that this person likes to eat and whatever they need in order to be comfortable, to have a comfortable life. To be treated kindly and respectfully by others.
And to have inner qualities peace of mind, joy, wisdom, love and compassion, courage. Think of whatever this person needs both on the material, practical level as well as on the emotional and spiritual level in order that they will be happy. Imagine giving those things to the person. Now imagine that this person’s needs and wishes are fulfilled. His or her mind is filled with peace, happiness and all the knowledge and qualities of the spiritual path.
Let your mind rest for some time in a feeling of joyfulness that you have been able to help your loved one in this way. Then to conclude the meditation, remember the motivation that you started with wishing to be of benefit to others. Dedicate the positive energy of doing the meditation, that it will be the cause for happiness and peace both now and in the future, all the way up to enlightenment for yourself and all other beings.