So good morning.
Lovely to practice beside you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for making this space.
I am touched by your presence.
Let's take time to settle.
If you've just woken up like I have then maybe do some circles or some stretches.
Listening to the sensation of your body,
What does it need?
To feel a little bit more spacious.
And then allowing the weight of your body to drop.
Towards Earth.
As you come into stillness.
Feeling your state little feet on the ground.
The weight of your legs and your hands in your lap.
Allow the pull of gravity to Let your elbows become heavy and shoulders slide away from ears.
Witnessing your breath.
Observing.
The quality of the in-breath.
Knee up breath.
How does the in-breath feel?
And what comes with the abbreviation.
Can you be curious about the sensation?
As it shifts.
Between breathing in and breathing out.
Is there a difference in the current and the time?
The breath be felt.
By every cell of your being.
Being interested in the way that the body and the breath.
Respond to one another.
We can start to play with that.
In Tonglen.
We turned things on their head.
We disrupt the way that we usually operate.
So that we can be curious.
About the way we're making meaning.
The way we're responding to our world.
Ties into the the very first of the Buddha's teachings.
The Four Noble Truths.
That there is suffering.
There is an origin of suffering.
There is path.
To easing suffering.
And these are.
.
.
This is the Eightfold Bow.
Understanding where we are clinging.
What we are clinging to.
How tightly our clinging is.
And understanding what we are rejecting.
Pushing away.
Dismissing.
Feeling aversion to.
Deez the Buddha suggests are the causes of suffering.
What we cling to.
And what will you reject?
This is where the illusions lie.
The lies that we tell ourselves.
The distortions.
In being.
Present.
With the moment.
Presence.
Is a moment where we lay down.
Are patterns of clinging and.
.
.
Rejecting.
We just let be What ends here?
How does that feel in your body now?
As my dear.
How does your heart feel?
As we stay in this space of curiosity.
Can you notice?
Something that you cling to at the moment.
Or perhaps something that you're rejecting.
It might be a feeling or an emotion.
It might be a circumstance.
I can feel.
For myself,
How?
My daughter becoming a woman and leaving home.
Is something that I reject.
Not fully,
In many ways.
I welcome it but there are parts of me that want her to stay.
And so parts of me that cling to a family unit.
Us being home.
The routine.
That we're all used to.
And so when I go into that,
I can easily feel what I'm rejecting.
About.
Her independence.
And what I'm clinging to.
My role as mother.
Her childhood.
And I can feel the grief.
With all of that.
So you will have your own.
Experience.
And never usually.
Heart to bite.
Already available.
The thing that you're rejecting right now.
The thing that you're clinging to.
Just take a moment to be with whatever it is that you can find.
That's come in maybe it's less about finding.
Maybe just let it come to you.
And stay with your breath.
With Tongue and we start to breathe in the thing that we're normally rejecting.
We breathe it into ourselves.
Can imagine breathing it right down into the very heart of your belly.
And as you breathe out.
You breathe out the thing that you're clinging to.
The emotion.
With a story.
Or the circumstance.
Using my practice as an example,
Breathing in.
Her departure.
A growing,
A leaving.
And breathing out.
Her childhood.
My motherhood.
The world we've been so familiar in.
For the last 18 years.
Breathing it out.
And giving it away,
Handing it over.
Feeling into this.
There's no real right or wrong way.
To be practicing.
Just find your version.
Breathing in that which you usually resist.
Taking it down into your belly.
And then breathing out that which you usually cling to releasing it.
With your helper.
You might stay curious about these sensations of the body,
How the body responds to the practice.
Tonglen can be really difficult.
If you're finding it difficult.
Know that you're not alone.
It often is.
But there is something in the drawing.
There is something in the curiosity.
Can you allow your heart to grow,
Be enough for the practice?
Or does it feel too tender today?
Perhaps not every day feels like a big-hearted day.
Some days it's just enough to be here.
To be willing to try.
Laying the practice down.
Finding ground beneath your feet.
Coming back to the sensation of the body zebri this for a moment to lay down.
The clinging to lay down the rejecting.
And be with what's here.
Letting it all be here.
Offering the fruits of our practice to ourselves to each other and to all beings namaste
