..续本文上一页k with the practice called the compassion breath. Then you know how to transmute what you see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think every day. Compassion breath involves, on the inhalation, taking in suffering—your own or someone else”s—and on the exhalation letting it go. And the truth is that, with practice, this process helps you learn to be kind to yourself and to all beings as well.
We have the capacity to take in an enormous amount of negativity and to let it go its way. We don”t avoid anything because we know we can work with it. Most people don”t know what to do when they notice unwanted thoughts and feelings within themselves, or see a dead animal on the road, or killing on television shows or in the news, or the many homeless and starving people right beside them as they walk down the street. And then there”s drugs, alcohol, AIDS and cancer. People feel overwhelmed, and the result is that often their hearts turn hard and cold. I”m sorry to say it, but it”s true. The normal response to these things would be that everyone should be crying—this is the awakening of compassion—but the ignorance of sentient beings causes us to continue to enhance samsara. The practice of compassion breath allows our hearts to remain soft and open while our spirit and life-force are replenished. And our tears are part of this replenishment, an important part. You do not have to be a Buddhist to do this: it is meant to be used by all human beings, everywhere, even while standing on a train.
The Tibetan Buddhist nun Ani Tenzin Palmo said that compassion practice is a form of discipline. Most people really don”t like discipline, but it”s necessary. Maybe it would be easier to say it”s preparation, but whatever word we use, we need discipline and preparation for the effort to stay on the train and allow the scenery to go by. Pretty soon, even before you know it, you”ll be sixty, and that”s not so old. Scenery changes quickly.
When you”re a child, a day seems to last a long time. Sometimes at the grocery store in town you may see a father holding a baby, and the baby is completely surrendered into the father”s arms. The child”s body/mind shows its purity and trust. As the child becomes older, naturally it wants to grow in all ways. Then in almost no time at all summer holidays don”t come so often, the seasons drift by, new babies are born and at a certain age friends start dying. This is true for every one of us. But regardless of what age we are, we should do our best to see the whole picture.
When we talk about “saving all sentient beings,” we are talking about everyone in that picture and also all forms of life. But the real meaning of the phrase remains beyond our reach and again is pretty abstract. Our practice can help you to make a good start toward breaking down that abstraction by revealing how you can take in and release your suffering, which includes the suffering of others. It”s not uncommon at the beginning of this practice for people to feel a little afraid to allow suffering to come in. If this is true in your case, you can practice imagining yourself doing it, or pretending, until you see what”s actually there. The point is that as you begin to do this, little by little you are actually transforming what you receive. And little by little from the particular you make your way into universal suffering by imagining all the other people in the world with the same feelings and conditions you have, who are suffering exactly like you. Now your suffering is in the right perspective, and it”s no longer personal.
Compassion practice includes your active participation in accepting this suffering, but that is not all. At the same time that you take all of this in and then release it, there still is the blue sky and the bright morning sun shi…
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