It’s eighth-century India. On the vast, steamy Indo-Gangetic Plain sits Nalanda University, a Buddhist center of learning that’s also a monastery with some ten thousand students and two thousand teachers. Among them is a young monk named Shantideva. While other monks study diligently, he spends most of his time eating, sleeping, and wandering. The senior monks think the best way to get this layabout to work harder is to give him a challenge. So, they ask Shantideva to deliver a public teaching, hoping the added pressure will motivate him. No luck. Shantideva appears not to prepare at all!
Disappointed but resigned, the senior monks assume the lecture will bomb and Shantideva will leave the university out of embarrassment. To get ready, the monastery builds a golden throne high above the courtyard where Shantideva is to speak. In many tellings of this well-known story, there were no stairs up to the golden throne. The senior monks hope Shantideva, unable to climb to the high throne, will be humiliated and leave before ever starting to speak.
“Practicing tonglen, we can imagine a world where we grow stronger together.”
When Shantideva enters the courtyard, he’s met by a large crowd of villagers and monks eager to hear him. No need for stairs, Shantideva leaps up onto the golden throne! The monks are astonished. He asks the audience if they want to hear classical teachings or something new. Something new, they respond. Without skipping a beat, Shantideva launches into a profound discourse on compassion and wisdom that is now known as The Way of the Bodhisattva. The monks are once again stunned. Shantideva’s talk offered insights they’d never heard before.
His teaching was so profound that, as the story goes, Shantideva quite literally transcended the moment—rising high into the sky and eventually disappearing. What he left behind was his words and a shift in perspective that still resonates today.
Whether the story of its birth has been embellished or not, Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva is widely regarded as one of the most influential texts in the Mahayana—the Buddhist tradition that focuses on cultivating wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all beings. Through study and practice of The Way of the Bodhisattva, we recognize the many ways we’re interdependent and connected, and then, it only makes sense to focus not just on “me,” but also on “we.”
One of the most innovative aspects of this text occurs toward the end, in chapter eight, when Shantideva is speaking about meditation. There, he encourages us to “equalize” ourselves and others by reversing our innate tendency to put our needs and aspirations first. Equalizing means recognizing that our joys and sorrows are not unique to us. Just as we want to be happy, others do too. Just as we want to avoid suffering, so does everyone else. This is about more than feeling empathy, it’s about shifting the way we see ourselves in the world. Shantideva challenges us to rethink how we place ourselves at the center of everything. He writes:
Strive at first to meditate upon the sameness of yourself and others. In joy and sorrow, all are equal. Thus, be the guardian of all, as of yourself.
Later in the same chapter, Shantideva goes further than asking us to equalize ourselves and others and asks us to exchange ourselves for others—in other words, to share our happiness and take on other people’s suffering. A few verses later, he tells us why.
Seize this mind of self and wield it
to cut the knots of self-cherishing
and give yourself to others.
Self-cherishing isn’t the same as taking care of ourselves. It’s the voice in our heads that puts our happiness above others’. Ironically, elevating our happiness like this can make us feel less happy and more isolated. Self-cherishing is related to a survival mechanism we’re born with and habitually reinforce, so cutting “the knots” of self-cherishing is a tall order. Fortunately, there’s a tried-and-true practice to level the playing field and reverse the natural tendency to put ourselves first. It’s called tonglen, Tibetan for “taking and sending.”
Tonglen is the central practice of lojong, or “mind training,” which is a method of cultivating wisdom and compassion. Lojong was developed about two hundred years after Shantideva’s presentation at Nalanda when an Indian sage named Atisha synthesized the teachings he had learned from various Buddhist sources, including The Way of the Bodhisattva.
In the practice of tonglen, we take in suffering and send out goodness, well-being, and health. The purpose is not to magically cure people of what ails them; it’s about shifting our perspective. The radical act of taking in pain and giving away happiness is the opposite of a zero-sum game. In most of the games we play, only one side can win. One player’s success depends on another player’s failure. Tonglen encourages a different approach. Instead of avoiding pain and pushing it away, we train ourselves to relax and stay with the discomfort. Rather than holding onto our happiness with a tight grip, we offer it to others. With time and patience, taking and sending undermines zero-sum thinking and develops the fortitude necessary for our hearts to grow stronger than our fears.
A zero-sum mindset incentivizes us to push away suffering and guard our happiness. We keep painful emotions at a distance, so we don’t have to feel them. Or, if we do feel them, we clamp down to hold them in check. Meanwhile, we grasp onto happiness by tightening our grip, so we don’t lose it. Even the words we use to describe these automatic reactions to pleasure and pain—grasping, guarding, gripping tightly, clamping down—evoke a sense of contraction. Tonglen encourages us to do the opposite: to ease up and expand our perspectives.
This approach turns the way we relate to suffering and happiness on its head. As a result, our understanding of interdependence deepens. When we see that countless people around the globe are navigating the same painful emotions we are—right now—we sense that we aren’t alone. We aren’t separate from others’ suffering. Taking and sending helps us understand that sharing others’ burdens doesn’t need to come at our expense. Nor does sharing our good fortune lessen our happiness. Practicing tonglen, we can imagine a world where we grow stronger together.
Here’s how to practice tonglen:
Get Ready
Find a comfortable spot where you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes and allow yourself to settle. Take your time. When you’re ready, notice the sensations in your body. Feel your face, neck, shoulders, arms, and hands, belly, legs, and feet. Then, rest in open awareness. You don’t have to do anything special. Just sit and know you’re sitting.
Breathe in Suffering, Breathe Out Ease
Think of the suffering of a particular person, group of people, or all beings. You can visualize the unpleasant feeling as thick smoke or a dense cloud. If visualization doesn’t come to you easily, that’s okay. Instead, focus on the emotions you’re working with and get in touch with how they feel. Make space for them; don’t push them away or try to change them. If there’s resistance, stay with the discomfort and let go of the narrative. Remember, countless people around the world are feeling emotions just like the ones you’re feeling. You’re not alone.
As you breathe out, think of something that feels good and imagine giving it away. You can picture your happiness as a clear, radiant light, but if visualization doesn’t come easily, don’t worry. Just imagine sharing any sense of peace, comfort, or well-being you feel with someone else.
Continue to breathe in what feels bad and breathe out what feels good for as long as you like.
What to Do with Your Resistance
Don’t be surprised or worried if you resist the whole practice; you can practice tonglen with your resistance, too. Breathe the resistance in and then breathe out empathy for yourself and everyone who feels the same way. In Buddhism, this is using poison as medicine, that is, transforming your so-called problem into the very thing that deepens your wisdom and compassion.
Another way to approach resistance to tonglen is to begin by practicing it for yourself. This is how Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche recommends that children begin, and it’s wise advice for anyone, regardless of age. So, think of something that’s challenging you right now, anything that feels bad, and breathe it in. Then breathe out relief.
Expand Your Practice
When you’re ready, extend your practice by imagining that everyone is content and free of suffering. Tonglen is an action-oriented practice, says Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness: “We give as much as we can give, we expand as much as we can expand.” Take this instruction quite literally. What would a world look like where everyone is living with ease?
Taking and sending is not an armchair practice detached from day-to-day life. In fact, it can be especially powerful in hard times. I was reminded of this recently when a close friend received devastating news. I’ve always been someone who wants to “fix” things and make them better. (I’m working on that.) So, it was no surprise when I visited my friend that I desperately wanted to do something to ease her pain. Given my long history of trying to fix what can’t be fixed and having it backfire, or pushing discomfort away only to feel worse, I took a different approach. I practiced taking and sending.
Sitting next to her in the hospital waiting room, I imagined breathing in her pain—not to magically remove it but to be with her in it. I was grieving too and far from happy, yet when I dug deep I found some ease and spaciousness within. When I breathed out, I imagined giving it to her.
Eventually something shifted. Although I couldn’t change what had happened, the way I was relating to it changed. Tonglen gave me a way to stay grounded and connected to her without becoming overwhelmed, and I was more available to her than if I’d clung to a fix-it mentality.
You can practice taking and sending whenever you see suffering—and not just other people’s suffering. Taking and sending is also a way to take care of yourself. When strong, painful feelings show up, make space for whatever’s there as you breathe in. Breathing out, send yourself the qualities you need to be more open and resilient. This practice isn’t just for big emotional moments, though. Our practice grows stronger when we weave it into daily life.
If you’re walking or washing dishes and something is bothering you, breathe it in. Then, breathe out a sense of spaciousness and ease. If you’re in a frustrating conversation, tonglen can help you stay present and openhearted. If you notice you’re running on automatic pilot at home or work, interrupt what you’re doing to drop into tonglen. And you can even practice taking and sending with strangers who have no idea you’re thinking about them. Whatever quality you think they need, imagine giving them yours.
Like Shantideva floating into the sky at the end of his discourse, tonglen offers a way to rise above the old habits that keep us guarded. When we stop grasping at happiness and pushing away pain, we loosen the knots of self-cherishing that bind us to a narrow sense of “me.” Taking and sending asks us to stretch beyond ourselves, to open rather than contract. Then we see that compassion isn’t a burden—it’s what lifts us.
Through practice, we can recognize that suffering isn’t something to fear, nor is happiness something we must cling to. Both can move through us as our breath moves in and out. When we ease our grip on what we think we must hold onto, we discover a freedom that isn’t about changing, fixing, or getting rid of something but about a spaciousness that allows us to be more flexible, openminded, and resilient.
As the old story goes, after Shantideva gave his teaching, he became weightless and floated up off his golden throne. Perhaps the weight he really let go of was that of self-cherishing itself. Taking and sending reminds us that we, too, can lighten up—lifting ourselves and each other.
