Give (and take) a Little Love

So let’s look at several meditations that are specifically linked to our aspiration to become a bodhisattva. The first is called ‘Sending and Receiving’, or in Tibetan Tonglen. It’s rooted in the Shantideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva and is also found in the Thirty Seven Practices of the Bodhisattva I mentioned previously, and it is designed to cultivate loving kindness and compassion, make ourselves less special and at the same time hopefully help others as well. This is the basic instruction:

• Start with the refuge and bodhisattva prayers.

• Using mindfulness of the breath let the mind settle.

• Once settled just rest and in whatever way is available to you to have a sense of the vast and unlimited compassion of your buddha-nature. This is an infinite resource capable of endlessly giving. Get a feeling of it.

• Visualising someone you love, as you breath in receive their pain and struggles. It may be something general or something specific. It may help to visualise this as something dark that is drawn through you and which disperses into the vastness of buddha-nature.

• Then as you breath out send to this person healing, happiness, well being - whatever will make them feel better. And again it may help to visualise this as light pouring through you from the limitless compassion of the awakened mind. You are the conduit.

• Do this for a few minutes and then move on to do it for yourself, someone unknown, an enemy and finally everyone including oneself - very much in the way we do a loving kindness meditation.

• And finally end with a dedication of the good that has arisen from this practice.

Having practiced and taught this for quite a number of years I know it to be not an easy practice. For a start, the mere fact of having to sustain concentration is a challenge and we will find we become distracted and need to bring ourselves back. But that’s Ok. We just do it in the confidence that gradually our concentration will strengthen.

There is also the really big issue of what is our role in this. Is it me who is doing the receiving and sending or am I simply the conduit both pass through as they move with the breath backwards and forwards? There are several answers here. Plainly we are not truly capable of personally breathing in all the suffering of samsara and then transforming it, send out a universally healing light. Just a tiny bit of this is overwhelming - remember the feeling of reading too much news - and I suspect the attempt to do so could be psychologically damaging. That’s certainly what some people who have attempted to do this when they start this practice say. For this reason Pema Chödrön says we must start with a ‘flashing openness’ which is to connect with the awakened mind, and it is this infinitely compassionate space that receives the pain and sends out healing. This is the way I have taught it here. However, Tsoknyi Rinpoche says something different. His position is that it should be personal. That we should feel the pain of another and be truly willing to give something of ourselves up so that they may be well and happy. My guess here is that he is trying to counter the feeling of being a lovely bodhisattva who just breathes out light and love but nothing really touches them. He has a strong nose for the phoney. He wants it to feel real - he wants it to bite. My sense of both these approaches is that Pema Chödrön is right - what heals can only be our awakened mind, this is the true refuge and source of all well-being. However, Tsoknyi Rinpoche is psychologically astute in his observation that we can subvert this practice to our need to feel good about ourselves - and doing so make the whole thing meaningless.

There also exists - what I think - is a much more challenging form of this practice which certainly makes it feel very personal. It’s called ‘Exchanging Self for Other’.

• Start by visualising someone deeply loved - usually our mother. Feel the love.

• Imagine them suffering within each of the unhappy realms, the hot and colds hells, the realm of the hungry ghosts and the animals. Feel a vast compassion for them and their terrible suffering and then expand this in the knowledge that all sentient beings are feeling this. See their infinite number before you.

• Next imagine your most hated enemy, someone who has really harmed you and those you love. Get a visceral sense of them.

• As you breath out send to this person all your health, wellbeing, good karma, all that is precious, in the form of a light and nectar. Pray that they have everything they want - that they become full of joy. And mean it.

• As you breath in receive as a dark mass all their pain, anger, sickness and ignorance. Feel it like a cloud or smoke being drawn in and receiving it feel joy and bliss. Pray that you can truly help them to know happiness and be free of suffering.

• And then do the same for all sentient beings!

Plainly this version is a step up and is certainly worth a try at the very least. It definitely is designed to bite and can be used either on or off the meditation cushion. In the past I have used a version of it when sitting with someone in psychotherapy when all words have failed and a sense of dread and helplessness have taken over. When there is nothing to do, do this.

One last bit. Many of us as children felt that it was our place to be responsible for the happiness of our parents. If this is our experience there is a strong possibility that this core wound will distort this practice. We may already feel on a personal level that we have to make everything all right for everyone else. This feeling is not an act of a bodhisattva but rather a terrible omnipotent burden that no child - or child in the adult - can hope to bear. This is something to watch out for and I suspect those that find this practice overwhelming are those that have been wounded in this way. If we find that we are experiencing this during this practice then the appropriate response is to stop and be present with the felt sense until it dissolves. No one can make everything right - even a buddha.

NW and PV 12 January 2026