When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

When a person abandons their own comforting beliefs about reality, they begin to understand how others think and feel. As they become more accepting of their own pain, they also can sense the pain in others.

Unhoused people become invisible to outsiders. No one will talk to them; their loneliness is intense. Their pain feels unbearable, so people walk away from them. In rejecting them, people put the blame on them. Feeling guilty about this, people then blame themselves for being selfish. Assigning blame lets people push the pain away: Things and people fail to live up to their standards, so they need to be fixed.

People feel righteous about how the world should be. If people disagree with one’s position, they get angry, and “this is what wars are made of,” the “feeling that we have to be right, being thrown off and righteously indignant when someone disagrees with us” (108). When a person decides they’re wrong, the anger is just as severe, except it’s aimed at oneself.

In making things right or wrong, people run away from their own doubts. Yet hearts are big enough to live with ambiguity; if one does so, they can be with themselves and with others without judgment. They can dare to communicate even while feeling uncertain.

The way to soften an otherwise angry and threatening encounter is to accept one’s own feelings, the ones they want to reject as unworthy. This opens their minds, and they can hear what others have to say.

Everyone has inside them a “soft spot” of gentleness toward others. Accessing this place is called “bodhichitta,” the “noble or awakened heart” (114). Parents feel it when they hear about injuries to other people’s children. A woman dying in pain suddenly sensed the anguish of others—someone starving, another dying of an overdose, another crushed in an accident and dying alone—and realized that her sudden feeling of tenderness came from her awareness of “the pain of all beings” (114).

Bodhichitta is the healing that comes from pain itself, which transforms into compassion for other people. Like a jewel that’s hidden in the Earth for millions of years, bodhichitta remains unchanged and shines brightly the moment it’s uncovered. When one can be there for their own anguish, they can do the same for others, and bodhichitta emerges.

One way to enlarge bodhichitta is to practice tonglen, “a practice of taking in pain and sending out pleasure” (116). A person activates Tonglen by inhaling the pain of others and exhaling happiness back to them. One couple that works with people who are incarcerated received letters so filled with pain that the woman began spontaneously practicing tonglen for them. Some people with AIDS have practiced tonglen: It makes their own pain seem worthwhile. One man recalled the abuse he suffered as an infant; he practices tonglen, in-breathing the pain of all neglected babies.

Defenses against pain are like armor that imprisons the heart. Tonglen helps to break up the armor; it induces kindness and tenderness, and one relaxes and breathes more deeply. Exhales become moments of sharing; one can afford to give out happiness.

Bodhichitta can’t be compelled; neither can it be used to distance a person from others. It shows up spontaneously when hearts are open. In the climb up the mountain of spirituality, others can get left behind, but with bodhichitta the mountain points downward. “Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt;” after years or lifetimes, one reaches the bottom among the thick of humanity, where lie the healing waters of “the love that will not die” (120).

Tonglen can awaken compassion in anyone, no matter how cold or cruel. One way to begin is to practice receiving pain from, and giving happiness to, a single individual. Another approach is to intake one’s own pain and the same pain in others, then send out to all of them whatever would give oneself relief.

This practice “does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, wanting everything to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others” (123). It dissolves protective shields and melts defensive egos. Tonglen also reverses a person’s usual attempt to receive pleasure and avoid pain. It connects people to their love for others and their openness to the world.

Tonglen can be done on the spot when one sees someone suffering. The process converts emotional poisons into medicines. As a formal meditation, the process begins with a sense of open stillness, then a breathing in of a sense of dark and claustrophobic heaviness, and an exhalation of cool, light freshness. This is followed by breathing in someone’s pain, or one’s own anxiety and, with it, the same feeling from others, and exhaling to them relief. Finally, the tonglen procedure expands to include everyone in the world who suffers from that pain.

Tonglen can even be extended to one’s enemies, absorbing their stuckness and confusion. This increases openness, melts the solidity of one’s beliefs, and extends one’s compassion.

If there were a place that taught not the art of war, but the art of peace, it might be run by bodhisattvas, those who have dedicated themselves to relieving the suffering of others through enlightenment. They likely would teach the paramitas, six activities that promote peacefulness in daily life. These include “generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, and meditation” (130). Visitors from all over the world will have their own codes of behavior, so these paramitas would not be taught rigidly but in accordance with the sixth paramita, the intuitive insight called prajna.

Generosity of spirit goes beyond one’s fear of loss and desire to hoard. In giving of oneself, a person reduces the withholding of resources that leads to conflict and instead connect to the “fundamental richness” of life that’s shared by all. People also let go of their opinions and allow others to disagree; this, too, is generous. Soon, a person gives away everything that interferes with their peaceful nature.

Generosity teaches a kind of “fearlessness” to others. A person can also give away the teachings, the dharma, so that people obtain the resources to discover their own generosity.

Discipline isn’t about preventing negativity; it’s about removing the ability to distract oneself. Patience comes not from aggressively searching, but from waiting and observing. Exertion is doing the hard thing now because the value lies just beyond. Meditation is sitting in the “present moment” and allowing it to unfold until one finds oneself in openness. The sixth paramita, prajna, “cuts through the whole thing” with an ongoing acceptance of everything (138).

The world needs bodhisattvas—bus drivers, politicians, grocery store clerks—trained in the ways of peace. It’s a calling for the sake of everyone and the future.

People have lots of opinions. In meditation, a person notices how solid opinions feel, and they loosen their hold on them. Meanwhile, people get angry at those who disagree with them, especially when it’s something important, like the ozone layer or polluted rivers. Opinions, though, aren’t facts. When a person lets go of opinions, they can see past them to their natural intelligence. Then they can act on behalf of the planet and the oppressed in a clear-headed, non-aggressive way. “The less our speech and actions are clouded by opinion, the more they will communicate” (145).