The Plainclothes Clown

This blog was taken from my Substack post here.

A description of how to practice Tonglen can be found here.

Tonight’s image comes from this article on Tonglen.

You’re all probably familiar with the trappings of what the West call “Buddhism.” I’ve got some shocking news for you - there may be a religion called Buddhism, but it’s not like the Western concept of religion.

What they teach is sets of techniques, which affirm the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Noble Path as set out by the Gautama Buddha. Everything else - the necessity for shaving your head, the fasting, the prayer wheels, the orange robes - is superfluous.

The techniques being taught, such as meditation, are collectively called dharma - which means reality. There’s nothing special about it. Meditation just forms a practice to bring your mind to the present, such that you’re living in the present moment, aware of where you are, and what is surrounding you.

This, by the way, is what “mindfulness” is. Another word hijacked by the snake oil merchants who follow behind every new fad going. The same jerkoff scam artists who glommed onto Aleister Crowley’s Thelema and Tarot cards, also slithered into the space carved out by Wicca and the resurgence of the runes. Hint: if you are talking to somebody who claims to be a master of the runes, but never uses the term “Elder Futhark” or understand what the words mean, they’re grifters after your money. Same deal for anybody who nowadays talks about mindfulness. Same shysters, same shill, different name.

And so to Tonglen.

This comes from the page “Bad In, Good Out” that I linked to earlier.

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves. In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish — you name it — means to not run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one’s whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one can open one’s heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The page “How To Practice Tonglen” above opens with this paragraph.

Pema Chödrön teaches us “taking and sending,” an ancient Buddhist practice to awaken compassion. With each in-breath, we take in others’ pain. With each out-breath, we send them relief.

The article, written by Pema Chodron herself in 2023, points out one of the most important points of dharma meditation, which distinguishes the real practice from any kind of Deepak Chopra quantum new age snake oil nonsense.

Meditation is sometimes not for your own personal solitary enlightenment. Meditation is also about bringing enlightenment and peace to everyone else.

Tonglen practice, also known as “taking and sending,” reverses our usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In tonglen practice, we visualize taking in the pain of others with every in-breath and sending out whatever will benefit them on the out-breath. In the process, we become liberated from age- old patterns of selfishness. We begin to feel love for both ourselves and others; we begin to take care of ourselves and others.

It is that simple. Practice a breathing technique such as box breathing, and with each inward breath you visualise yourself drawing in everybody’s dark and negative energies, suffering and pain, only to transmute them to relief and release from suffering and the root of suffering with each outward breath. Each cycle, you draw in the bad, transform it like alchemy, and send it out to the people around you.

You can do Tonglen in a shop, a hospital, or on a crowded bus or train. Anywhere that you can meditate, you can do Tonglen. Anywhere you can sit down and still your body and mind, you can lighten the burdens of yourself (because you can also transmute your own darkness and despondency), those nearby, and the whole world.

This topic is worth coming back to. Like hypnosis, meditation forms a large part of my life. Compassion for everybody is a core element of everything I do, in public and private, so expect me to return to topics like hypnosis, Dharma, and chaos magic on this blog.