Start Where You Are

parts—flashing absolute bodhichitta or working with
the black, heavy, and hot and white, light, and cool.
These can be skipped in daily life when you do ton-
glen on the spot.
The key to compassionate action is this: everybody
needs someone to be there for them, simply to be
there.
A friend was severely burned and disfigured. Later
she was able to have plastic surgery to improve her
looks, but there was a long time when it was difficult
to look at her. This was a time of intense isolation.
The nurses would just pop into the room and say
cheery things and then get out of there as fast as they
could. The doctors would march in and say efficient
things and look at her charts, but not at her. All who
encountered her kept their distance because the
sight of her was too troubling, too disturbing. This
was even true of her family and friends. People made
their duty calls, but there was some sense of not
wanting to relate with the horror of this disfigured
person. Finally some hospice people started to come.
They would sit there and hold her hand, just be
there. They didn’t know what to say or what she really
needed, but they weren’t afraid of her, and she real-
ized that what people really need is for others not to
be afraid of them and not to distance themselves
from them.
That’s what tonglen provides—a support for us
172
Communication from the Heart

---

just to be there with another human being and try to
communicate. Sometimes there’s nothing to be said
and nothing to be done. Then the deepest communi-
cation of all is just to be there.
The practice goes further. We start with the self,
extend out to situations where compassion naturally
arises, move out further to this area of neutrals, and
then we move to enemies. “Be grateful to every Juan.”
To be truthful, probably no one in this room feels
ready to do tonglen for an enemy. Just the word
enemy is a problem, a label with a lot of emotion be-
hind it, a lot of anger behind it, and a lot of soft spot
behind it. Basically you have to start where you are
with your loathing or whatever it is you feel, but with
an aspiration to widen the circle of compassion.
I’ve found in my own history of working with this
practice of awakening bodhichitta that the circle of
compassion widens at its own speed and widens
spontaneously; it’s not something you can make hap-
pen. It’s definitely not something you can fake. But I
guess there’s a little bit of encouragement to at least
experiment with faking it occasionally by seeing what
happens when you try to do tonglen for your enemy.
There’s a lot of encouragement just to try this and see
what happens when your enemy is standing in front
of you or you’re intentionally bringing up the memory
of your enemy in order to do tonglen in the medita-
tion hall. Think of this simple instruction: what
would it take to be able to communicate with my
Communication from the Heart
173

---

enemy? What would it take to be able to have my
enemy hear what I’m trying to say, and what would it
take for me to be able to hear what he or she is trying
to say to me? How to communicate from the heart is
the essence of what tonglen is about.
You can extend even further to all sentient beings,
which involves seeing that this practice is extraordi-
narily vast. Of course, we could use the notion of “all
sentient beings” to distance ourselves from pain, to
make the immediate, relative situation more abstract
and far away. Someone said to me in all seriousness,
“I have a very easy time doing tonglen for all sentient
beings, but I have a little trouble doing it for my hus-
band.” Doing tonglen for all sentient beings doesn’t
have to be separate from doing it for yourself and
your immediate situation. That’s the point that has
been made again and again. When you connect with
your own suffering, reflect that countless beings at
this very moment are feeling exactly what you feel.
Their story line is different, but the feeling of pain is
the same. When you do the practice both for all sen-
tient beings and for yourself, you begin to realize that
self and other are not actually different.
174