Tonglen, as Judy Lief explains in the coming July 2012 issue of the Shambhala Sun, is a meditation practice in which “we breathe out what we normally cling to and breathe in what we usually avoid” to connect with suffering and change our relationship with others. In the following piece, Emily Strasser visits with a Tibetan monk in India who’s putting tonglen into practice to help the children in his community.

Ten years ago, a young Tibetan monk, Jamyang, sat outside his room in Dharamsala reading about the tonglen practice. The day was sunny, and above him the clouds played in the mountain peaks. From the Tibetan words tong, “to give,” and len, “to take,” tonglen describes a meditation in which the practitioner visualizes breathing in the suffering of the world in the form of thick black smoke, and breathing out his own joy and comfort, as clear and luminous air.

When Jamyang looked up from his reading, he noticed three Indian boys in ragged clothes picking food out of a rotting garbage pile. The next day, Jamyang cooked a large lunch and shared his food with the boys. Over simple daily meals of rice and dal, Jamyang and the boys formed an unlikely friendship.

They took Jamyang down to the Charan slum in Lower Dharamsala, where their families lived in temporary shelters made of bamboo poles covered in plastic sheeting. Jamyang was shocked to see that children without even garbage to eat were dying of malnutrition and diarrhea. The slum had no sanitary facilities. Alcohol abuse, disease, and domestic violence were rife.

Himachal Pradesh, a fertile mountainous state with a growing economy, is home to more than 10,000 internally displaced people, driven from their homes in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh by environmental degradation and economic changes that have made their previous livelihoods unsustainable. They come to Dharamsala, with its thriving Tibetan exile community and steady stream of tourists, to maintain the winding mountain roads, haul cement for new guesthouses, fix the hiking boots of foreign trekkers, and beg. Many families move seasonally to follow the festival and tourist seasons.

Jamyang immediately began collecting food, medicine, and clothing. He took people to the hospital. Yet he soon realized that addressing the material needs of the people was not sustainable. The Tong-Len Charitable Trust was registered in India in 2005 with the goal of supporting internally displaced people in the region by combating the root causes of poverty, focusing primarily on education for the children.

The local government school is free, but child beggars provide an essential source of income for many families. Children enrolled in school attended only sporadically because their families moved so frequently. In 2005, Tong-Len set up a hostel near the slum to house school-aged children, provide meals, supervision, and academic support. That first year, there were just ten kids. In November 2012, a new hostel building was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama, and Tong-Len now houses about 90 children between the ages of seven and sixteen, divided equally between boys and girls. Jamyang hopes that after the children graduate and find jobs, they will return to help their communities. The four oldest students are in 10^th class and will graduate in 2-3 years; they are some of the top students in the state.

.     .     .

The tonglen meditation scares me—I do not want to take the black smoke into my body; I am afraid to give away my own happiness. Stories like Jamyang’s also scare me—when we allow ourselves to really see people and feel true compassion, we may never be able to turn away again.

How much can we afford to let in? Jamyang did not ask himself that question when he shared his lunch with the slum kids that first afternoon. His hair has begun to gray at 37, but his smooth face creases only at the eyes when he smiles. We are sitting in his bare concrete office; the only decorations are a painting of Mother Theresa and a photograph of the Dalai Lama hung above his desk, both draped in kataks, white Tibetan blessing scarves.

I tell Jamyang about my fear of the tonglen meditation. I ask him how he does not become overwhelmed by the endless need he sees around him, by the limits of his ability to relieve that suffering. As I am speaking, Jamyang nods, and punctuates my words with “yeah, yeah, yeah,” as if he has heard all this before.

“The important thing is we have the desire to help all,” he tells me. “We cannot do as we are thinking, but we need to act as much as we can.” But Jamyang does not really want to talk about this—he admits that while he occasionally attends prayers in the Dalai Lama’s temple, he does not meditate. He would rather tell me about his hopes to expand health and educational programs to the more than three-dozen other displaced communities in the region. He has moved from his quiet quarters in Upper Dharamsala to a room near the hostel in Lower Dharamsala. For Jamyang, his work is his prayer and meditation, as constant for him as a breath.

When I visit the girls’ hostel, I am greeted by high, clipped voices, “Good morning Madam.” Small hands lead me to a chair. The girls wear worn but clean clothes, and their hair is oiled and tightly braided. They stand up one-by-one to tell me their names, ages, and “aims”—they want to be doctors, scientists, and engineers. I can’t keep the smile off my face as they show me around their hostel, tugging at my elbows, proudly pointing out their bright clean bunk beds.

The staff of Tong-Len, a mixture of Indians and Tibetans, can tell you how many children, families, and communities they serve. Every year, they must make difficult decisions about which children the hostel can take. What they cannot count are the infinite needs of all those they are unable to help. Neither can they count the immeasurable effect of their compassion. “My aim is astronaut,” says twelve-year-old Poonam, the quietest girl in the room. When I leave the hostel, gently untangling myself from the small fingers and high voices of the children who come from nothing but aim high, I feel lighter.

To donate or learn how to volunteer to the Tong-Len hostel, visit its website. To read more about the tonglen practice, see The Tonglen and Mind Training Site.

Emily Strasser has spent time living and studying Buddhism in Dharamsala, India. A writer and traveler, she is rooted for the moment in New York City, where she writes and edits The Pushcart Journal and serves on the editorial board for the PEN America Journal. 

You can also see more of her writing on her personal blog, Seabrightly.

The basic meaning of emptiness, in other words, is openness, or potential. At the basic level of our being, we are “empty” of definable characteristics. We aren’t defined by our past, our present, or our thoughts and feelings about the future. We have the potential to experience anything. And anything can refer to thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.

Read more of “This Is My Mind, Luminous and Empty” here. You can find the full article, which includes meditation exercises on emptiness and clarity, in our current May 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine.

At the ceremony, he said he plans to give most of the prize money, £900,000, to the Indian branch of Save the Children, an international organization dedicated to ending child labor and exploitation, and providing health care, education and other services to impoverished children. Another £125,000 will go to the Mind & Life Institute, a nonprofit that aims to understand the human mind and the way contemplative practices like meditation can benefit it. The remainder of the money will go into a fund to educate Tibetan monks about science.

Templeton Prize organizers said the Dalai Lama was chosen for the award because of his encouragement of scientific research and his engagement with people from many different religious traditions. The prize is the largest monetary award given annually to an individual.

“When I heard your decision to give me this quite famous award, I really felt this is another sign of recognition about my little service to humanity, mainly nonviolence and unity around different religious traditions,” His Holiness said when he was announced as its recipient. For more information on the Templeton Prize and the Dalai Lama, watch this video on YouTube.

Together with our friend, author Lodro Rinzler, the Shambhala Sun has been sharing selections from Shambhala Publications’ Under 35 Project, which gathers original writings from younger Buddhist practitioners. May’s theme is “Work,” and in this piece, Sarah Maynard

“Sarah has hit on something that we all face in our work life — that difficult person we simply can’t wish away,” Lodro says. “They are there, day after day, presenting us with an opportunity to practice.”

Click through to read Sarah’s story, and to learn how you can be a part of the Under 35 Project.

How not to tell a colleague to **** off

A few years ago I worked with someone who truly shook my practice. I was just at the start of “serious” practice and was definitely not ready for such a challenge. Thankfully for me, it has been a rare occurrence, but every so often in life you encounter someone who makes you want to gouge your eyes out and shove them in your ears so you no longer have to see or hear their absurdities. If there’s anything I can’t take, it’s bad manners, and without meaning to sound too much like my mum, what does it really cost to be polite? This particular colleague was a pure bully, bringing a very special combination of bad manners (to put it politely) and chaos.

The situation was made worse by the fact that I had worked so hard to get this job at a prestigious hospital. And in a matter of weeks, I could feel her wearing away at my delicately constructed layers of confidence. And this was the person I was required to work most closely with in my job. This post isn’t going to be all rant, but in the interest of being informative, I was faced with a colleague who ignored me when I said good morning and goodbye, and who actively disagreed with everything I said, professionally or otherwise. Despite being at a similar level as this colleague, I was treated as the skivvy, doing all the jobs she didn’t want to do.

Far from feeling like a grown-up professional, I was 15 again and back in the playground dealing with the school bully. Thankfully I had come some way from the modes of retaliation I opted for at school, but she certainly unleashed years of built-up frustration at a particular breed of girls. There was definitely something in the fact that I was in a large all-female department; it was as if some primitive powers of destructive competition would meander their way through the department on a daily basis.

So, I began working on trying to make life more bearable primarily for myself and resisting the urge to tell her precisely and explicitly what I thought of her. Of course, it did go through my mind to try to reason with her in a very adult fashion and tackle things head on, but the thought of doing this made me feel physically nauseous, and I feared making things even worse than they already were. So instead I added her into my daily practice as the ‘difficult person’ in my metta bhavana (loving kindness) practice. And my god, did it stretch me. I had to work up to just picturing her in the practice, let alone sending any metta. It surprised me to realize, however, that the first stage of sending myself metta was every bit as important as the latter stages. It was okay to realize that I was suffering too.

After some weeks I was finally able to tolerate a short period of sending her metta, and I had a few ‘light bulb’ moments. I realized she was clearly suffering herself, as no one at peace with herself could display such behavior. I also realized I wasn’t the only person around her she caused to suffer, and there were most likely people who were less able to cope with this than me. Finally, I decided there must be people out there in the world who find her utterly agreeable. Dzogchen Ponlop makes a very apt observation of an angry work colleague: “Appreciate that she’s caught up in a pattern of confusion and that her confusion causes her more pain than it’s causing you, because it touches all parts of her life. You’re only dealing with it at the office.” How true — if only I had read this at the time!

It’s also so easy to make other people’s issues about us. All I could think at the start was “What the hell have I done to her?” “What’s so awful about me that she can’t stand?” This is a great example of the ego closing in and shutting down our thinking. Clearly, the world does not revolve around me, although this feels like a revelation on some days.

Slowly… very slowly… things started to shift. I watched the frustrations build up in myself as my ego was seriously threatened, and then slowly dissipate. I let go of the resistance to her behavior. It was what it was. I tried to help those around her who she upset. After some months, I noticed that at times (on a good day) I could approach her slightly more compassionately.

This stood out for me on two particular occasions. The first was her birthday, when her card was making the rounds to be signed. While I had the impulse to write something decidedly rude on it, I paused and sat deep in thought, wanting to say something kind, but also genuine. So it turned out I could find a few words. The other occasion was when I held the door open for her. She did not acknowledge me — not even a bit of eye contact — but waltzed straight past without a “thank you” in sight. This was a situation that would have infuriated me on a normal day, but on this day something different happened. I laughed. So was it the perfect response? No, probably not. But it was progress from the blind rage I had felt earlier. And the weird thing was that the laughter was at both of us: her for her blatant rudeness, and me for my incessant desire for impeccable manners.

So on my last day at my work, I thanked her and said goodbye. I didn’t lie; I didn’t tell her I was sad to be leaving or that I would miss her, but I did work hard to find something kind and constructive to say. And she ignored me, naturally.

So what happened to my colleague? Well, rumor has it she was disciplined after I left. And me? Well, I haven’t experienced such progress in my metta bhavana practice since.

Sarah Maynard is a clinical psychologist living in Kent, UK. She has been practicing within the Triratna Buddhist community for the past year and a half.

Click here to read our previous Under 35 Project posts.

And for more from the Under 35 Project, check out the project’s website. The next theme, for the month of June, will be “Social Action.” Click here to submit your writing on that theme.

She writes: “Like it or not, I needed to make friends with my anxiety. I began to relax a bit with my oh-so-groundless situation and put the kibosh on the idea that there was anything precious about my disability. Having a sense of humor helped. I started to refer to myself as “El Blindo” and told people I was hard of seeing. To my relief, I noticed that when I was easy with the reality of my newfound difficulties, other people breathed easier around me as well.” Read the rest of her story here.

“Blindsided” appears in the special section “Embrace Change” in the May 2012 Shambhala Sun magazine. Click here to browse the issue online.

From Top Left: Snow Lion President Jeff Cox, Shambhala Publications President Nikko Odiseos From Bottom Left: Snow Lion Co-founder Sidney Piburn, Shambhala Editor and owner Ivan Bercholz, Shambhala Executive Vice-President and owner Sara Bercholz

Shambhala Publications has announced that, as of May 10th, dedicated Tibetan Buddhist publisher Snow Lion Publications is “a part of the Shambhala Publications family.” This will add some 300 titles, including many by the Dalai Lama, to the Shambhala catalog. The acquisition was announced via posts at the websites of both Shambhala and Snow Lion.

According to Shambhala, the move will allow the Boston-based publisher to “offer the widest selection of Tibetan Buddhist books from a single publisher,” and was “in some ways more like a marriage than a business deal, since [Snow Lion had] been our esteemed colleagues in Buddhist publishing for well over twenty years.” Shambhala was launched in 1969 with the publication of Chögyam Trungpa’s Meditation in Action, and has since grown to become the largest publisher of Buddhist books, as well those of other spiritual traditions, and other types of material published under Shambhala-owned imprints.

Shambhala publisher Julie Saidenberg has told Publishers Weekly that Shambhala will “retain the Snow Lion name as an imprint and at least three Snow Lion editors will move to Shambhala.” Certain services from the Ithaca, New York-based Snow Lion, like their weekly Dalai Lama and Dharma e-mail quotes, will resume soon without current subscribers needing to do anything.

Reached for comment, Shambhala Publications President Nikko Odiseos told us:

“Shambhala and Snow Lion have always had a very positive, collaborative relationship, and this really accelerated in the last year and a half as of Sidney Piburn, Snow Lion’s cofounder, and Jeff Cox, the president worked with Ivan and Sara Bercholz and me on a few challenges we face in our little corner of the publishing world which, is changing so quickly.

“Many of us here at Shambhala read a lot — and I mean A LOT — of Snow Lion books. So we were big fans to begin with.  The ground was ready.

“The basic driver for this was that Sidney and Jeff wanted to be sure that Snow Lion’s mission, making important books from the vast Tibetan Buddhist tradition available, continue and flourish and not be dependent on them personally.  And thus,  Snow Lion is now part of the Shambhala family.

“Snow Lion’s editorial team is now part of Shambhala as well, and Sidney will be helping us out too — he is a gem and the whole Tibetan Buddhist world is really indebted to him as well as the entire Snow Lion team for their dedication and incredible work for over thirty years.”

The following is from a letter about the acquisition posted by Snow Lion co-founder Sidney Piburn, President Jeff Cox, and editor Christi Cox:

“Thirty years ago His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave the founders of Snow Lion a mission: to publish books from all the traditions of Tibet. It was most important, he told us, to be non-sectarian in our approach. More specifically, he suggested that we publish translations of classic texts and monastic textbooks from each of the four main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, commentaries by eminent lamas past and present of their respective lineages, and works by Western practitioners and scholars skilled at bridging the cultures. In addition, he suggested we publish books for those newly interested in Buddhism, books for serious students and scholars, as well as materials for advanced practitioners.

“As we’ve gotten older we’ve been working to ensure that our important mission continue into the future. We feel very pleased that we were able to connect with Nikko Odiseos and Sara and Ivan Bercholz, the new generation so capably running Shambhala Publications. All of them are serious practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, and they share our interest in preserving the full range of this invaluable tradition.

“So we are very pleased that Snow Lion is joining Shambhala Pubs and we have great confidence in its continuous bright future! It has a good home and we are looking forward to the great work still to come!”

The Shambhala website now includes the Snow Lion titles and has been updated both in design and in functionality, so that visitors can searchable by tradition and practice. Shambhala states that they “will no longer carry merchandise and practice items other than books and audio,” which had been a significant part of the Snow Lion catalog. In their statement, however, they do list several recommended distributors of such items. Shambhala Publications books are themselves distributed by Random House, and Snow Lion’s titles will be similarly available later this year.

“Discipline is important. When we sit down to meditate, we are encouraged to stick with the technique and be faithful to the instruction, but within that container of discipline, why do we have to be so harsh? Do we meditate because we ‘should’?

“How we regard what arises in meditation is training for how we regard whatever arises in the rest of our lives. So the challenge is how to develop compassion right along with clear seeing, how to train in lightening up and cheering up rather than becoming more guilt-ridden and miserable.”

Ready to get started? Then visit our special Spotlight page of Pema Chödrön’s best teachings from the Shambhala Sun, as well as our How to Meditate Spotlight, for plenty of helpful, plain-language guidance.

In this brand-new video, yogi and Buddhist teacher Michael Stone, author of “What’s the Music All About?”, found in our current issue, breaks down the oft-used term and shows how it relates to being mindful about what’s really going on.

Find lots more from Michael Stone on SunSpace here.

The film focuses on Locho and Yama, a young couple living a traditional nomadic lifestyle herding yaks and horses. But as Dzachukha becomes increasingly modernized, many people in their community have been moving to cities and towns to find more stable work.

“It’s become a different place, a desperate place,” Locho says in the film. “It’s changing so much it’s hard to recognize.” According to Locho, Yama, and their community, the herders have entered duegnan — “dark times.” [More, with video trailer, after the jump.]

The filmmakers spent several months with Locho and Yama as they grappled with a difficult decision: they want their infant daughter, Jiatomah, to have the best opportunities in life, but they worry that if they send her to school, she won’t choose to live the traditional nomadic life her family has been living for countless generations.

Directed by Lynn True, Nelson Walker, and Tsering Perlo, Summer Pasture has been screened at numerous film festivals, garnering nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards and the Gotham Independent Film Awards. It was produced by the Kham Film Project, an association of American and Tibetan filmmakers working to share issues and experiences from inside Tibet.

Independent Lens screens tonight at 10 pm on most PBS stations. Check pbs.org for local schedules.

“The practice of contemplative photography is a method for revealing the hidden richness and beauty of the phenomenal world; revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary,” Karr said about his trip.

“Teaching this practice on a first visit to São Paulo, Brazil was both ordinary and extraordinary. The softness and inquisitiveness of the participants was extraordinary (not to mention the feijoada, a most traditional Brazilian dish, and the caipirinhas, Brazil’s national cocktail). At first it was hard to get beyond the excitement of the exotic, but after a couple of days we were back on the earth, surrounded by buildings and cars, people and trees, sky and pavement, and, once again, the practice brought out the richness of this ordinary world,” he said.

Carlos Inada is pictured in the last photograph.

For more from Karr about contemplative photography, check out Buddhism and Photography: What’s the Connection? which includes a video interview and an excerpt from The Practice of Contemplative Photography.

See also: A Way of Seeing, another selection from the book published in the May 2011 Shambhala Sun magazine.

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