Namaste

Is this beautiful or what????-Love, Michele
The extraordinary teacher, Pema Chodron, taught me, via cassette tape, Tonglen practice. Knowing how to do this ancient practice of taking in pain and suffering and sending out peace and light, has been a wonderful gift to the medicine bundle I carry in my life. One of the slogans in the Lojong teachings that accompany Tonglen is: Be grateful to everyone. Be grateful to everyone. How beautiful is that! Because everyone is a teacher. Everyone brings us something of value, even if it seems totally negative to us at the time we receive it. I would add to that, and the Buddha of course already did so: Be compassionate to everyone. Don’t just search for whatever it is that annoys and frightens you, see beyond those things to the basic human being. Especially see the child in the man or woman. Even if they are destroying you, allow a moment to see how lost in their own delusion and suffering they are. It is only this insight into brutality and any form of meanness and cruelty that lessens the pain of being oppressed and in so many cases on this planet, senselessly annihilated. -Alice Walker