Tonglen (giving and taking) is a method for connecting with suffering — ours and that which is all around us — everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality.

Healing Through Tonglen

It is painful to exclude a person from your heart. In this meditation you are invited to soften that pain and see a difficult person in a different way. It might change the way you relate to that person as well. 

Loving - Kindness With A Difficult Person

This is a led meditation practice, as taught at the City Lit and the West London Buddhist Centre.

I encountered this meditation for the first time when I was finding life a little stressful, and there is no doubt that it has helped me immensely since 2007. I would heartily recommend anyone to have a go.

You could start right now, but you might like to read this introduction that Jinananda once wrote:

The first thing is to find a quality of stillness.  It is possible to move or walk with this quality of stillness, but in this practice, you can start to develop it by being physically still.  You can move during the practice, but the invitation of the practice is not to fidget. 

If you need to, you can lie down to do the practice, but if you can, you should sit up, in a chair or on the floor, either kneeling astride cushions, or if sitting cross-legged, sitting high enough on cushions so that the knees are lower than the hips. 

The aim of the practice is to cultivate a concentrated appreciative attention to our moment-by-moment experience of the breathing process. 

There are four stages, or approaches, to the practice.  Each of these stages represents a slightly different way of being aware of the breath, of being aware of in the breath.  Starting with the easiest, and working towards the stage requiring the most delicate focus of concentration. 

Mindfulness is not about closing down or cutting off our thinking, it is not an exercise in fixing or forcing the attention.  It simply provides our thinking with something to come back to when it becomes aware of what it is doing. 

We are being mindful at the very moment that we realize that our mind has been all over the place.  Coming home to the breath, we are coming home to ourselves.  Without trying to stop the mind doing what it wants to do, we are centring the mind, settling it.

You can find other meditations of Jinananda's on jonfrewin's soundcloud page.

A guided Mindfulness of Breathing meditation for beginners, by Jinananda

This the Self-Compassion Nourishing Breath Meditation in Elisha Goldstein's 6-month online mentorship program - A Course in Mindful Living. Find out more here: http://acourseinmindfulliving.com

A Course in Mindful Living

Nourishing Breath Meditation 10 Minutes

Practicing Tonglen is a powerful way to connect with yourself and all of humanity. We all experience sadness and other "negative" emotions at different times, yet when we do, we often feel very alone in it. This practice reminds us that we're not alone when we are in pain. If we have the courage to break the habitual pattern of pushing away the pain, we can experience deep compassion for ourselves and all beings.

Befriending difficult emotions - Tonglen with yourself

Anxiety engenders feelings of isolation—when we don't feel at ease, how do we find peace? This meditation explores making amends for the times we've hurt ourselves, others, or those who have hurt us.

A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety

Reconciliation Meditation (20 min)

Become available for healing, forgiveness and a deeper connection with others.

This 15 minute guided meditation asks you to smile! This may seem an unusual practice however it is a rather beautiful way to open a connection to your heart which is the centre for healing and forgiveness. The intention of this meditation is to open your heart which allows you to connect more deeply to your own truth and to open lines of communication with others.

Open Heart Meditation

Instructions about connecting with nondual awareness while being in a public place. 

Connecting with nondual awareness in a public space

A Meditation to Gather Your Energy from Sharon Salzberg

A conversation with  Liz Stanley.

This episode's guest is Elizabeth Stanley, a professor at Georgetown University and author of the book "Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma." Liz is a U.S. Army veteran who came to practice (in part) to help her with PTSD. In their conversation, David and Liz discuss contemporary definitions of trauma and how this relates to the current moment; the neurophysiology of trauma, including the relationship between what Liz terms the “thinking brain” and “survival brain”; and their current assessments of the impacts of COVID-19, it’s impact on social windows of tolerance, and their hopes for the path ahead.

Episode 14 | Widening the Window of Tolerance

Rely on Silence - Part 12

Stephan Wormland, MA in clinical psychology and trained in Gestalt therapy. He has studied and practiced meditation in multiple Buddhist traditions for over 30 years and spent altogether 5 years in meditation retreats. Stephan was a monk in the Tibetan tradition for 11 years and teaches meditation in Buddhist centers in Europe.

Loving - Kindness With A Difficult Person

Natural Meditation podcast