Yoga, Pain, and Tonglen: Contemplating Sadhana Pada, Book Two of the Yoga Sutras
“Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.”
This opening line of book two has always leapt out at me, and re-reading the sutras for the purpose of this training has left me thinking about book two consistently. Although I’ve been much more aware of pain as a central focus of my personal spiritual practice since the early-1990s when I was introduced to the Sutras alongside the Four Noble Truths of Mahayana Buddhism from the perspective of Buddhism, this reading of the sutras has helped me better understand why this is the case and how to help others better understand pain as opportunity. “Accepting pain” is one of the most challenging practices for all of us human beings because our instincts so thoroughly want to avoid it. I personally have come to believe that this tendency towards avoidance only elongates, intensifies, and deepens our experiences of pain, and that the practice of acceptance leads to freedom and the ability to feel more joy than one can imagine in all that careful avoidance of pain by staying so “safe” (shut down) all the time.
The pages that follow to complete book two discuss ignorance, using practice to minimize obstacles, aspects of attachment and aversion, developing discernment, using the 8 limbs alongside the yamas and niyamas, meditation and mastery of mind towards experiencing nonduality, and the path leading to pure mind and the mastery of the senses. To me, this is the most critical portion of the Yoga Sutras, and it illuminates why the practice of meditation (on the cushion, and in the world) is the bringer of Light, and, I believe, enlightenment.
The idea of pain being helpful is what draws me to this section of the sutras. As part of the explanation of this opening line, the translation of the sutras I have talks a good deal about tapas (burning and creating heat), and the purifying nature of heat. The following quote sums up how pain is purifying:
By accepting all the pain that comes to us, even though the nature of the mind is to run after pleasure. We will actually be happy to receive pain if we keep in mind its purifying effects. Such acceptance makes the mind steady and strong because, although it is easy to give pain to others, it is hard to accept it without returning it. Such self-discipline obviously cannot be practiced in our meditation rooms, but only in our daily lives as we relate with other people. Tapas also refers to self-discipline. Normally the mind is like a wild horse tied to a chariot. Imagine the body is the chariot; the intelligence is the charioteer; the mind is the reins; and the horses are the senses. The Self, or true you, is the passenger. If the horses are allowed to gallop without reins and charioteer, the journey will not be safe for the passenger. Although control of the senses and organs often seems to bring pain in the beginning, it eventually ends in happiness. If tapas is understood in this light we will look forward to pain; we will even thank people who cause it, since they are giving us the opportunity to steady our minds and burn out impurities.**
Asana practice has a way of bringing pain to our attention. Sometimes that pain is physical, as we notice parts of our physical bodies that are stressed, overtaxed, undeveloped, overused or underused, etc., and we can either focus our awareness on those parts and support them towards healing, or we can choose to avoid that awareness in a variety of ways. Sometimes the pain we discover through asana practice is emotional, or spiritual, or a mix of everything we know. When what we choose do with all that pain is to keep practicing, stay aware, focus our attention again and again, we begin to practice to yoga. I am acutely aware of the difference between using asana to practice yoga and using asana to avoid or distract myself from practicing anything like yoga. It is only when using it for spiritual practice that purification can occur.
But HOW? HOW can we learn to accept pain? We must tame the wild horse within each of us.
Patanjali’s directive is tapas (heat), svadhyana (study), Isvara pranidhana (surrender to God/Supreme Being) and points towards meditation as the vehicle that serves to teach these requirements. We learn meditation progressively through continual practice, practice, practice, and that practice needs to be approached with anl understanding of impermanence, and a commitment to a “permanent” life-long practice.
As our relationship with pain and suffering becomes dynamic, we begin to discover abilities to be still, to be uncomfortable, to be compassionate, to be so very emotional, to be overwhelmed with darkness and with light, to be stubborn and willful, and, eventually to be humble and to surrender completely to the whole, no longer fearing our pain, our separateness, or our impermanence.
Here in the Western world, we are so busy and we have so much to do, so much of the time, our practice begins as separate from the rest of our lives. We practice on the mat or on the cushion. We’re attentive and focused and awake and aware for an hour or less; and for most of us, “or less” is more likely on our mats or cushions. Just being and experiencing whatever is alive right here in this moment is bewitching, bothering, and bewildering to most of us, especially at the beginning of the lifelong road of practice. Some days, well into our lifelong journey, it feels like starting over again from the very beginning.
Accept all of this struggle as part and parcel to practice, and we’re well on our way.
Again, I ask HOW?, and I hear “BUT HOW?” from clients, students, and friends almost daily. I am still practicing, every day.
And these days, I have a lot of answers. I have a lot tools and techniques and data-driven neuroscience-based practices to offer myself and others to practice more-better-pragmatically. The best of all those “hows” is still meditation.
I have, however, found that one particular form of meditation is infinitely effective specifically towards accepting pain: Tonglen Meditation.
Tonglen Meditation Practice
Tonglen practice gives us a way to take potentially shattering, painful, disconnecting experiences & events and turn those obstacles into a powerful healing process that connects self to self, and self to others. As we expand our ability to feel and accept our own pain, we expand our ability to feel and accept love and compassion, for ourselves and for others.
Tonglen is an ancient Tibetan meditation practice, and it has profoundly life-affirming effects on the mind and nervous system. Used over time, the cumulative benefits of tonglen can include healing through grief & loss, addressing addiction problems (even inter-generational patterns), coping with chronic pain & illness (as a patient and as a caregiver), handling anxiety, living with depression & depressive tendencies, and managing anger issues effectively, to name a few. Tonglen’s power over our mental attitudes and thinking lies in its persistent instruction to face our “worst” experiences directly and without judgment, openly and with a basic belief in our own ability to change our personal perceptions. We have the ability to transform our “worsts” into the very things we need and want most: love, acceptance, respect, health, joy, gratitude, peace…
When we avoid pain, pain is isolating, and our tendencies sever our internal and external connections, which creates more pain.
When we get so angry, for example, that we are totally out of touch with our Positive Pathway, we are disconnected and experience only anger. It’s isolating. Our behaviors create further disconnection, often with the people we love most (like our kids who just colored on the wall with a sharpie, for example). When we get so overwhelmed with gratitude that we just stop to think how lucky we are to have our little hellions who write on walls, we experience a certain connection with life itself… and this connection nurtures a connection with others. When we are connected to the positive, we are somehow connected to ALL that is because we can just see more than ourselves in a situation or experience. We can see there’s something beyond our immediate feeling or experience. As we maintain a regular practice of meditation, we become aware that we have a choice. We can either experience our pain as something we don’t want (a disconnecting experience) and become victims or we can accept our pain as helper, teacher, opportunity (a connecting experience). We can face and accept our pain as warriors of truth. When we accept our pain, we begin to become aware that our pain is everyone’s pain. We can get clear about what’s really going on: we are just being humans. Everyone has felt pain. Everyone has felt angry. Hurt. Full of hatred. Despair. Desperate. Disappointed. Isolated. Lonely. Unloved. Unheard. Unacknowledged. Unknown.
If you are a human being, something in your experience has been dark and painful. Pain is the darkness of being human. These feelings are universal, but they are more universally avoided or masked or hidden in parts of ourselves we dare not expose, even to ourselves. Tonglen asks for universal acceptance without judgment, without fear, without shame. Tonglen practice asks us to experience and acknowledge this dark side of being human, in order to transform it into the light we all seek.
Book Two, #15:
“To one of discrimination everything is painful indeed, due to its consequences: the anxiety and fear over losing what is gained; the resulting impressions left in the mind to create renewed cravings; and the constant conflict among the three gunas, which control the mind.” **
Sri Swami Satchidananda’s commentary on this sutra begins:
The world is a training place where we learn to use things without getting attached. Instead of saying, “To one of discrimination, everything is painful,” it becomes, “To one of discrimination, everything is pleasurable.” A person with such an understanding has the magic wand to convert everything into happiness. Pleasure and pain are but the outcome of your approach. The same world can be a hell or a heaven.
This sutra and Satchidananda’s commentary point to the healing and joyful outcome of practicing Tonglen meditation.
How to Tonglen
Tonglen means “sending and receiving,” and it’s an active meditation practice of integration. This practice integrates our thoughts and emotions with our breath and body. In the simplest of terms, tonglen asks that we breathe in the shit of our experience, hold it in our hearts to accept it, and then we breathe out what we want to experience instead of the shit. So, as we breathe in, we are literally taking in all the pain, anger, shame, blame, guilt, fear, sickness, hurt, despair… one thing at a time, as it occurs to us that we’re experiencing it. We take it on, by breathing it into ourselves and putting a label on it. Hurt. Anger. Etc. We label it as we breathe it into our own bodies. Breathe in the shit.
Then, we hold our breath for a moment, allowing that pain – that suffering, that shit – to settle into us so that our hearts (our “citta,” which is both mind and heart in Sanskrit, “chitta” in the sutras I have** as “sum total of mind” p538) can transform it and create what we need and want most instead of the pain & suffering. When we exhale, we release back into the world the exact opposite feeling of whatever we labeled and breathed in. We send back out what we want instead of the pain. We send it, let it go freely. We surrender the good. .We release the good stuff. And then we take our next breath, and we repeat the process. We inhale fear, we exhale courage. We inhale hate, we exhale love. We inhale grudges, and exhale forgiveness. We inhale pain, we exhale ease. We inhale anger, exhale calm. Inhale frustration, exhale patience. Inhale unheard, exhale acknowledged. And we just keep going, and the process begins to ring us out.
We use our own mind-body’s ability to change perspective. We use our big fancy brain full of conscious awareness to see our own experiences clearly, and we see ourselves as human. Once we’re solidly able to do this transformation on our own behalf, we begin to receive the “worsts” from others. We begin with those we love most. Partners, parents, children, friends, brothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, uncles. Whoever it is, we receive their pain, we hold it and transform it within our own bodies, and then we send them love, peace, acceptance, calm, ease, joy… we give this goodness freely, because we can always generate more. If we are breathing, our transformational ability is infinite. We know the fuel: the fuel is suffering. We know the need: love and acceptance and compassion and health… We all share these needs.
Then we keep expanding our circles as we practice tonglen over time. We expand it to our wider circles of acquaintance. We take on the pain of our city or state, then our country. And eventually our continent and our world as a whole, and all human beings in it. We just continue to expand our awareness as much as we’re able to expand in each practice. We reach and stretch our conscious awareness with tonglen, allowing a deeper connection between our nervous system and our “self”, and between ourselves and all other sentient beings. We can practice tonglen to acknowledge and then transform pain & suffering in ourselves and in our world – period. Over time, as our circles expand, our connections deepen.
Book Two, #33:
“When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of. This is pratipaksha bhavana.” **
Sri Swami Satchidananda’s commentary on this sutra begins:
Here, Patanjali gives us a very nice clue on how to control the mind and obstruct those thoughts we don’t want. The best way, he says, is to invite opposite thoughts. If the thought of hatred is in the mind, we can try to bring in the thought of love. If we can’t do that, we can at least go to the people we love and, in their presence, forget the hatred. Although the hatred comes to the surface, we can keep it from coming out or staying long by changing the environment.
It seems to me that this sutra and Satchidananda’s commentary would be in beautiful alignment with the practice of Tonglen. Though the philosophies differ in many aspects, yogic philosophy and Buddhist philosophy have a distinct overlap of understanding how to end suffering. Within my personal understanding, Tonglen meditation practice is the center of practicing yoga for purification and transformation.
My contemplation of book two of the sutras has led me to a better understanding of myself, yoga, Buddhism, and the cessation of suffering. I am grateful for the opportunity and for the idea of trying something I’ve never considered before: practicing tonglen during asana practice.
