This morning, continuing to ask for the help along the lines of the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, I am met through the sharing and reminders of others by one of my early recovery teachers.
Pema Chodron introduced me to the Tonglen practice of the Lojong teachings – a breathing practice that for me sets all others on their ears.
Often I hear someone swearing by the practice of “breathing in faith and breathing out fear.” When this was mentioned to me some weeks ago, I wanted to gently question it, to ask, ‘This fear that you suggest we breathe out – where does it go, where does it settle?’ Is this fear that you rid yourself of, is it like secondhand smoke, choking and infecting others?
This is the thing: breathing in faith and breathing out fear seems to point to my comfort at the expense of yours.
Tonglen practice, on the other hand, instructs us to breathe in all the hot, dark, heavy things and then to sit with them with compassion, to allow the innate love “deep within every man, woman, and child” to work its transforming magic and then to breathe out the “cool, bright, light” qualities we are all hungry and thirsty for in this world and moment.
I have so very much to be grateful for, to smile about, to appreciate and to love. I am, though, still human (:-) and still learning and I awoke to this day filled with the hot, dark, heavy things that still visit at times.
And then a friend mentioned Pema Chodron … and all her smiling reminders and teachings came like a broom, eager to help … and then I came upon a poem shared with me some weeks ago by another friend, so exquisitely apropos of the Tonglen practice.
Thank you and thank you and thank you.
Wage Peace
by Judyth Hill
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
Tags: Breathing, Judyth Hill, Pema Chodron, tonglen, Wage Peace
