Transcript:
[00:00:00] Okay, so we've got this idea of compassion. Compassion is cultivated primarily by this  
[00:00:12] technique called tonglen, which just means giving and receiving. So it's this idea of  
[00:00:19] like whatever, and this is a really flexible meditation in the sense that it can be done  
[00:00:24] informally and formally, and you can stand in the line at King's and do tonglen. You  
[00:00:31] can be in traffic and do tonglen. You can also be seated in meditation and do tonglen.  
[00:00:37] And it's this idea of like whatever, so you're mindful to the point that you're aware of  
[00:00:42] what you're experiencing. And to the extent that what you're experiencing is afflictive  
[00:00:47] for you, like you don't want to be there, you don't want to be present with it. Well,  
[00:00:52] here's what you do. So if it's anger, or if it's depression, or if it's loneliness, or  
[00:00:57] if it's fear, okay, whatever it is, you begin to like imagine that you are actually breathing  
[00:01:05] in for all of the other individuals around you, say in an immediate radius, maybe a 250  
[00:01:13] foot radius, you are actually breathing in all of the fear of those individuals, okay?  
[00:01:21] You're like breathing that in, okay? And you're actually like seeing it come into you as kind  
[00:01:27] of like maybe a black sticky smoke, something like that. And it's coming into you and like  
[00:01:34] it's hitting your heart, and inside your heart you could put like whatever your favorite  
[00:01:40] like religious deity is, right? So if it's Jesus, then it's Jesus, Buddha, Buddha, it's  
[00:01:47] the spirit of Mother Earth, or whatever, it doesn't really matter. So like you put that  
[00:01:52] energy in your heart, okay? And when that black sticky smoke hits your heart, and hits  
[00:01:59] that energy that's in your heart, it's actually transformed. So it becomes the remedy for  
[00:02:05] the fear, or the depression, or the loneliness, or the anger, or the frustration, or the restlessness,  
[00:02:12] or whatever it is, and you would actually then breathe that out to all of these individuals  
[00:02:21] around you in that radius, and you would actually see it. You would see them breathing in the  
[00:02:28] remedy to the fear, okay? And you would see it actually like hitting their heart, hitting  
[00:02:35] them on a cellular level, starting to transform. And they would become, you know, they would  
[00:02:42] become more at ease, a little more peaceful, a little happier, like because you're doing  
[00:02:51] that for them. Alright, so maybe the remedy for fear is compassion. Maybe the remedy for  
[00:03:03] it is peacefulness, a sense of well-being. Maybe the remedy for greed is generosity.  
[00:03:13] The remedy for lust is like some sense of like wisdom, right? You can kind of like connect  
[00:03:22] the dots there a little bit. And so like why would that be such a great technique for cultivating  
[00:03:27] compassion? Like why has that been used for thousands of years? What do you think that  
[00:03:34] does? Breathing in the poison and breathing out the remedy for the benefit of other people.  
[00:03:42] Why does that work?  
[00:03:48] Yeah, like the boundaries that we have around people, places, and things. Back to equanimity,  
[00:03:59] right? The way we carve up and categorize everything, and then believe in its reality,  
[00:04:05] believe in it so strongly. If you can do tonglen with some energy, with some intensity, all  
[00:04:13] that stuff is shattered. And then you just begin to connect. You connect to the equality  
[00:04:22] of you and everyone else around you. And because there's no difference between you and them,  
[00:04:28] you cease being hesitant to help. And so you help, and then you're a service. And being  
[00:04:38] a service is part of psychological health, right? Being connected, proving the quality  
[00:04:47] of life around you. It's a big part of it.  
[00:04:55] So, you might find that when you do tonglen, it's more difficult than you thought it would  
[00:05:00] be. You might find that you have some resistance to the idea. Like breathing in suffering,  
[00:05:07] and then breathing out a remedy to the suffering. If you're breathing in a poison, breathing  
[00:05:14] out the antidote. I don't like to breathe in poison. Why is that good? That doesn't  
[00:05:19] make sense, right? It's the usual kind of response. And then, just sitting with that  
[00:05:29] and maybe doing it anyway, and seeing what happens. And if you can't, if it's too overwhelming  
[00:05:36] at that particular point in time, like I've taught this technique to many people, and  
[00:05:41] there are some who just, like, I just, I can't even approach doing it, right? If you're doing  
[00:05:46] it on an individual level, in a seated meditation set. It's like doing tonglen for my mother.  
[00:05:51] What? I hate my mother, right? That kind of thing. For my boss, I can't stand that prick.  
[00:05:59] I don't like him. Right? So, the whole idea of breathing in his poison and helping him  
[00:06:05] on the out-breath, that's like, well, that's great. That's where you're stuck. That's it  
[00:06:12] right there. Like, you've just seen it. And now your fundamental choice is, do you want  
[00:06:18] to engage, do you want to work with that? Or do you want to just leave that as a stuck  
[00:06:22] point and reinforce it one more time to be even more stuck later? Right? What do you  
[00:06:30] want to do? Because that would be your choice in the moment. So, tonglen is like really  
[00:06:38] actually quite good for, like, kind of showing you where you're stuck. Now, if you don't  
[00:06:46] think so, like, try the visualization with someone that you can't stand and see what  
[00:06:51] happens. When you, like, breathe in their suffering and then you breathe out the remedy.  
[00:06:59] See, like, how your mind responds to that. If it gets quirky or neurotic in some way.  
[00:07:08] Okay, so we should try a quick session of this tonglen. Maybe we'll do 10 minutes of  
[00:07:15] tonglen and see how that works out. Okay. So, this will just be a quick little session.  
[00:07:24] I'll give you a basic idea.  
[00:07:54] So, if you'll begin just by briefly attending to the breath, as it were.  
[00:08:24] As it rises and falls into abdomen.  
[00:08:30] Let your mind become still and relaxed.  
[00:08:35] Abiding in the tactile sensations of the abdomen.  
[00:08:54] And you can imagine before you,  
[00:09:24] seated before you,  
[00:09:28] someone that you label a disagreeable person.  
[00:09:35] Spontaneously, when you see this person's face, think of them.  
[00:09:41] You feel afflicted emotions.  
[00:10:24] And a sense of clarity and compassion.  
[00:10:28] Identify an emotion going on in your disagreeable person.  
[00:10:34] Identify some suffering.  
[00:10:38] Whether it's fear, loneliness, helplessness, powerlessness.  
[00:10:55] Begin with a sense of willingness and openness to breathe in the afflicted emotion of a disagreeable person.  
[00:11:18] You can see it as black, sticky smoke entering your mouth and nostrils, coming from the disagreeable person.  
[00:11:32] As it enters your body, it contacts your heart.  
[00:11:37] It is transformed into the remedy of that afflicted emotion.  
[00:11:47] And on the out-breath, you breathe that remedy out.  
[00:12:17] The visualization of the remedy can be like a light blue or white, pure energy, moving into the body of your disagreeable person.  
[00:12:42] When it contacts their heart, their heart is changed.  
[00:12:53] They become more open.  
[00:12:57] They become more peaceful.  
[00:13:01] They become more compassionate and kind.  
[00:13:05] With every in-breath, breathe in the afflicted emotion.  
[00:13:11] With every out-breath, breathe out the remedy.  
[00:13:19] Finish in silence.  
[00:13:34] Thank you.  
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[00:18:18] I fell asleep like I did every other time.  
[00:18:35] And it was amazing to me because my tendency is to laxity too.  
[00:18:40] And then I meditated.  
[00:18:42] I was meditating for probably two or three hundred hours.  
[00:18:45] And I found that I could actually awake myself up.  
[00:18:51] I could actually become less lax and drowsy.  
[00:18:55] If I breathed into it, I could change the balance of my mind.  
[00:18:59] And I could move forward like that.  
[00:19:02] And that was just one little functional thing  
[00:19:05] meditation allowed me to do.  
[00:19:08] You might find the same if you keep up the practice.  
[00:19:11] It's probably like trying to get more sleep.  
[00:19:16] In fact, one of my theories is like much of just what's wrong in our culture,  
[00:19:21] so much of the stress and tension and confusion is really attributable,  
[00:19:26] I'd say a good chunk of it, to just sleep deprivation.  
[00:19:32] Just don't get enough rest.  
[00:19:43] Less caffeine maybe.  
[00:19:48] Caffeine I like.  
[00:19:53] It's an attachment.  
[00:19:55] It's definitely an attachment.  
[00:20:01] My meditation was to breathe in boredom and laxity  
[00:20:08] and breathe out attention and awakeness.  
[00:20:11] I guess it doesn't really work.  
[00:20:13] But I felt a little bit more awake as I did that.  
[00:20:18] I was trying.  
[00:20:20] I did this meditation really quite actively.  
[00:20:24] I'd say the first six months I worked with men convicted of sex offenses.  
[00:20:29] And that was some of the hardest meditation I've done.  
[00:20:32] That was difficult.  
[00:20:34] And I would really punish myself.  
[00:20:36] I'd take the worst one.  
[00:20:38] I'd take the sickest, most screwed up bastard I've ever joined.  
[00:20:43] The one who I knew I couldn't reach because he's just too far gone.  
[00:20:48] I never should have let him out of jail.  
[00:20:50] I would take him.  
[00:20:52] And I would do time and time again.  
[00:20:54] And I found that it opened my heart.  
[00:20:59] I also found that it would in some ways make him,  
[00:21:03] I know this sounds very mysterious.  
[00:21:05] It kind of does to me too.  
[00:21:07] It would actually make him more amenable to treatment.  
[00:21:11] It shifted some of the energy between us somehow.  
[00:21:15] Just me doing this meditation on his behalf.  
[00:21:20] It allowed me to be more genuinely there.  
[00:21:23] And it allowed him to be more genuinely there.  
[00:21:28] At the end of the day, it opened up my heart.  
[00:21:30] I just had less armor and less fear and less attachment to stuff  
[00:21:36] and ideas and conceptions about that.  
[00:21:39] And I could drop some of that and just really pay attention  
[00:21:42] to how to be a benefit to these men  
[00:21:45] who have really done such horrendous things.  
[00:21:48] I was such a delusion in this function.  
[00:21:53] So in the end, it made me a better therapist.  
[00:21:55] Which, of course, is what we're starting to find on the other end.  
[00:21:58] Mindfulness has that effect.  
[00:22:00] If you add it into the training and the maintenance  
[00:22:04] and the growth of therapeutic skills.  
[00:22:07] So not only does it improve the patient report  
[00:22:10] of effectiveness of therapy,  
[00:22:12] it improves the effectiveness of the therapist.  
[00:22:16] So it seems to do both things.  
[00:22:20] According to the research.  
[00:22:23] The literature that's there now.  
[00:22:25] In the last 10 years or so.  
[00:22:28] You know, picking somebody that you don't like  
[00:22:30] when you're doing tonglen.  
[00:22:32] I've done it before with just thinking about strangers  
[00:22:34] and thinking about loneliness or depression or whatever.  
[00:22:38] And doing it that way.  
[00:22:40] When you pick somebody that you don't like and do it,
[00:22:42] It's a lot harder to do.  
[00:22:43] Yeah, exactly.  
[00:22:44] It's a lot more difficult.  
[00:22:45] Yeah. And then some wisdom comes into it.  
[00:22:47] So you have to know when to back off  
[00:22:50] and respect the fact that you just can't advance  
[00:22:53] into doing Tum Lin for hip or something.  
[00:22:57] You just kind of start in the easy places  
[00:23:00] and kind of work yourself up.  
[00:23:02] But you don't let yourself off the hook either.  
[00:23:04] You kind of keep moving forward.  
[00:23:06] Keep taking off layers of armor, in a sense.  
[00:23:10] As the hours and hours go on with the meditation.  
[00:23:14] Yeah.  
[00:23:16] And it is harder.  
[00:23:18] It's definitely harder.  
[00:23:20] And that's kind of where the juice is.  
[00:23:22] Like, kind of children.  
[00:23:24] Juice.  
[00:23:26] Those meditations have juice.  
[00:23:33] Yeah, OK.  
[00:23:34] So this was intended to just be kind of like  
[00:23:36] a little sampler plate of Buddhist psychology.  
[00:23:41] So I've received teachings for days and even weeks  
[00:23:45] on each of these topics individually.  
[00:23:48] They can be unpacked at great length.  
[00:23:51] And so I hope it's been stimulating.  
[00:23:55] I hope it's been useful.  
[00:23:57] And yeah, anyone who wants to kind of stay after  
[00:24:01] and talk for a little bit, that's fine.  
[00:24:04] Also, if you want, take one of my cards.  
[00:24:08] And I'll have these.  
[00:24:10] Now, I'm recording this.  
[00:24:12] So I'll have it digitized and available in a couple of weeks.  
[00:24:16] If you want access to the seminar we just did,  
[00:24:20] send me an email.  
[00:24:24] OK?  
[00:24:28] Thanks.  
[00:24:29] All right.  
[00:24:30] Thank you.  
[00:24:31] That's it.  
[00:24:32] We're done.  
[00:24:34] Have a good weekend.  
[00:24:37] Bye-bye.