About this ebook
Inhale suffering. Exhale peace.
Tonglen— "giving and taking" in Tibetan—is one of the most radical meditative practices in Mahayana Buddhism : the exact reversal of the habitual movement of the ego, which seeks to attract the pleasant and repel the painful. By attuning oneself to the rhythm of the breath, the practitioner welcomes the suffering of beings on the inhale and gives away their own happiness, virtues, and every good thing on the exhale.
This volume brings together in a single stream the three texts that, in the Tibetan lojong tradition , form the heart of this practice, accompanied by a concrete meditative guide:
Langri 's Eight Verses of Mind Training Tangpa (11th–12th century), a very short prayer-aspiration that the Dalai Lama recites every day and which condenses into a few stanzas the entire disposition of the heart required by the tonglen .
The Seven Points of Mental Training by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (12th century), the root text of the lojong school , which articulates in short maxims – seeds to be sown in the memory – the entire path, from everyday situations to the moment of death.
A selection from the decisive stanzas of chapter VIII of Śāntideva 's Bodhicaryāvatāra (8th century), the philosophical foundation of the idea of the "exchange of self and other": the dizzying demonstration that the boundary between "my" pain and that of "others" is drawn in the sand.
prose practice guide , faithful to the oral lineage of lojong , translating the three texts into concrete meditative instructions: posture, breathing, the four stages of practice, common difficulties, and how to bring tonglen into ordinary life—when one is hurt, ill, grieving, or simply happy.
Read together, the three texts show that tonglen is not an isolated exercise of compassionate imagination, but the operational condensation of an entire worldview. Śāntideva offers the reason, Langri Tangpa the arrangement, Chekawa the method : three voices of a single text.
The translations are complete and new, conducted in a sober language, close to the slow breathing of meditation, far from both archaicizing syncretism and popular simplification.
A small book for those seeking a practice that opens the heart without closing the mind—and a mind that understands without chilling the heart.
