One thing about walking the Buddhist path … you’ll never want for challenges. The other day while meditating, I realized that my practice of experiencing all things directly, with dispassion, through the neutrality of my senses, the equanimity of my Third Eye had impacted my ability to see someone else’s pain as my own, to practice tonglen effectively.
While I was very aware of the pain, and understood the pain, I did not feel it in any way, and so I was not able to adjust my interaction, my comments, to reflect that pain. To correct this, I had a few months previously meditated on seeing that person as myself, and I connected with his inner child and felt the pain deeply.
But somehow that experience did not translate to my changing my interaction. Instead, I continued to respond with equanimity, with dispassion, with a distance. The point is not that I should respond with emotion. The point is that I should be sensitive to his pain and adjust my comments in an appropriate way. That is what would result from a true practice of tonglen. That would be an exercise of compassion.
And so I have practiced tonglen again and am aware that compassion does not mean just saying “aw” to his pain, but to change my interaction, my comments, in a way that is reflective of my feeling of his pain.
While I was very aware of the pain, and understood the pain, I did not feel it in any way, and so I was not able to adjust my interaction, my comments, to reflect that pain. To correct this, I had a few months previously meditated on seeing that person as myself, and I connected with his inner child and felt the pain deeply.
But somehow that experience did not translate to my changing my interaction. Instead, I continued to respond with equanimity, with dispassion, with a distance. The point is not that I should respond with emotion. The point is that I should be sensitive to his pain and adjust my comments in an appropriate way. That is what would result from a true practice of tonglen. That would be an exercise of compassion.
And so I have practiced tonglen again and am aware that compassion does not mean just saying “aw” to his pain, but to change my interaction, my comments, in a way that is reflective of my feeling of his pain.
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