A beginner’s taste of tonglen, the Tibetan practice of breathing in another’s difficulty and breathing out ease, held as the tradition’s own.
When
When someone you love is struggling, and you want to meet that without turning away.
How
Bring to mind someone you love, and a difficulty they’re carrying. As you breathe in, imagine taking in their difficulty, as something dark and heavy. As you breathe out, imagine sending them ease, warmth, relief — whatever they need. Let the in-breath and out-breath carry this, gently, without forcing either.
Try it
Nothing you type is kept. It floats off the page.
A beginner’s taste
This is tonglen’s shape, not its full practice. In its tradition, tonglen is trained gradually — often beginning with someone easy to love before it extends outward to strangers, and eventually to those you find difficult.
Breathe in what is hard. Breathe out what would help.
Tonglen doesn’t require belief in anything beyond what you can test: does staying open feel different from turning away?