Uncover, Discover and Recover

I know very well from my own experience how hard it is to imagine taking on the suffering of others, and especially those of sick and dying people, without first building in yourself a strength and confidence of compassion. It is this strength and this confidence that will give your practice the power to transmute the suffering of others.
    This is why I always recommend that you begin the *Tonglen practice for others by first practicing it on yourself. Before you send out love and compassion to others, you must uncover, deepen, create, and strengthen them in yourself, and heal yourself of any reticence or distress or anger or fear that might create an obstacle to practicing Tonglen wholeheartedly.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

*Tonglen: Tibetan meaning of Tonglen meditation practice is sending and receiving.

 

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Taking on the suffering of others wasn’t part of the bargain when I first began this practice. I had no desire to heal anyone, nor did I wish to involve myself in their recovery in anything but the most superficial manner. I just wanted to have some relief from my own suffering. It is extremely difficult to think about anyone else but myself when I am in pain. I had to uncover the source of my suffering (distrust, anxiety, anger, fear) and share that with another human being to get any sense of what the spiritual path was about in helping others. From the outside it takes on the appearance of self-absorption but, in practice, an open-minded and thorough self-appraisal is the fulcrum that levers us to a higher level; the level where I found that I was worthy of recovery. It truly was the opposite of self-obsession as soon as I saw the universality of grace in the Heart of Compassion. Uncover, Discover and Recover is another trinity that completes the whole in the circle of my own individual expression of compassion for others.

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