Free The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World by Pema Chödrön

an intrusion. Having to clean the toilet and talk with people definitely seems to get in theway of our bliss. The tonglen approach is, ‘If you feel it, share it. Don’t hold on to it. Give it away.’
    Mahayana * Buddhism talks about bodhicitta , which means ‘awakened heart’ or ‘courageous heart.’ Bodhicitta has the qualities of gentleness, precision, and openness, being able just to let go and open up. Specifically, the purpose of tonglen is to awaken or cultivate bodhicitta, to awaken your heart or cultivate your courageous heart. It’s like watering a seed that can flower. You might feel that you have only that little thimbleful of courage, or you might feel that you don’t have any courage at all, but the Buddha said, ‘Hogwash! Everyone has bodhicitta.’ So maybe it’s just a little sesame seed of bodhicitta, but if you do the practice, it’s like watering that seed, which seems to grow and flourish. What’s really happening is that what was there all along is being uncovered. Doing tonglen sweeps away the dust that has been covering over your treasure that’s always been there.
    Traditionally, bodhicitta is compared to a diamond that’s been covered over with ten tons of mud for two thousand years. You could uncover it at any point and it would still be a jewel, our heirloom. Bodhicitta is also said to be like very rich, creamy milk that has the potential of being butter. You have to do a little work to get the butterness out of thecream. You have to churn it. It’s also been compared to a sesame seed, full of sesame oil. You have to do a little pounding to get the oil, but it’s already there. Sometimes bodhicitta is said to be like a precious treasure lying at the side of the road with a few dirty rags over it. People – perhaps very poor people who are starving to death – walk by it all the time. All they have to do is just pick up the rags, and there it is. We do tonglen so that we don’t have to be like blind people, continually walking over this jewel that’s right there. We don’t have to feel like poverty-stricken paupers, because right in our heart is everything anyone could ever wish for in terms of open, courageous warmth and clarity. Everybody has it, but not everybody has the courage to let it ripen.
    These days the world really needs people who are willing to let their hearts, their bodhicitta, ripen. There’s such widespread devastation and suffering: people are being run over by tanks or their houses are being blown up or soldiers are knocking on their doors in the middle of the night and taking them away and torturing them and killing their children and their loved ones. People are starving. It’s a hard time. We who are living in the lap of luxury with our pitiful little psychological problems have a tremendous responsibility to let our clarity and our heart, our warmth, and our ability ripen, to open up and let go, because it’s so contagious. Have you noticed that if you walk into the dining room and sit down and the one other person who is there is feeling good andyou know he’s feeling good, somehow it includes you, it makes you feel good, as if he liked you? But if you go into the dining room and the one other person who’s there is feeling really crummy, you wonder, ‘What did I do?’ or ‘Gosh, I better do something to try to make him feel good.’ Whether you’re having a headache or an attack of depression or whatever is happening with you, if you feel at home in your world, it’s contagious; it could give other people a break. We can give each other this break by being willing to work with our own fear and our own feelings of inadequacy and our own early-morning depression and all of that.
    Practicing shamatha is one way of showing your willingness to see things clearly and without judging. Doing tonglen is a gesture toward ripening your bodhicitta for the sake of your own happiness and that of others. Your own happiness radiates out, giving others the