in with the bad air, out with the good

(This is not the post I was going to write when I sat down, this was just going to be one paragraph at the beginning before I moved on to some other point which I can't even remember at the moment. Which means that I was figuring it out as I'm typed, which means that it's probably not exactly clear. But I don't have time to come up with something else to post about at this point. Forewarned is forearmed.)

Years ago I listened to a series of recorded lectures by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist teacher, about the practice of tonglen. Briefly, tonglen is the meditation practice of returning good for evil. You breathe in negativity and breathe out goodness. It sounds simple, but in fact, it can be quite difficult to do.

Pema Chodron says that tonglen is an intermediate practice, an idea that immediately gets my back up because I'm not a fan of hierarchical spirituality -- i.e., higher levels of spiritual insight that are only available to people who are in the know or have been around for awhile. I'm not a fan for two reasons: because first of all, it tends toward spiritual snobbery (poor you, you're not as spiritual as me because you haven't reached the level of teaching I have), and secondly, because it doesn't seem to me to be the way spiritual teachings work. Most spiritual lessons are utterly simple, and you just keep learning them over and over again in different ways and different situations. "Love is patient" or "give thanks in all circumstances" are pretty simple, but I keep having to learn them in new ways, sometimes deeper, sometimes harder, sometimes just the same lesson over again.

But in the case of tonglen, Pema Chodron has a point when she says it is an intermediate practice. It's a difficult practice because it's damn hard to actively love someone who means you harm, or who slights and ignores you, or who undermines your confidence, or does any of a thousand other things that hurt or betray. If mis-practiced, it can leave you open to abuse.

Also, it's easy to learn this lesson in a way that's false-- in some pollyanna way, making myself a martyr to the idea, when really I'm just slapping a Nice label on my fear of standing up for myself. I think you can only legitimately say that you love your enemy when you stand strong in yourself, take the negativity on the chin, don't duck it or complain about it or whine about it, and yet at the same time find compassion and kindness for the person who means you harm.

There is some similarity in Jesus' teaching in the sermon on the mount. Jesus says if someone slaps you on the cheek, turn the other cheek and let them slap you again. If someone asks you to carry his gear for a mile, offer to carry it two. In my false understanding of this teaching, I have at times simply let myself become a doormat--OK, I'll do whatever you want, because it's easier to go along with it than it is to fight it. I'll just suck it up and take it without complaining--on the outside. But inside I'm whining about being a victim, it's so unfair, you shouldn't act like that, it's not fair.

I don't want to say that Buddhism and Christianity are the same, because they're not. It demeans both religions to try and reduce them down to a set of universal principles. But this is a great example of the way that I've been able to use my understanding of both of them to illuminate each other.

Learning the similar-but-different Buddhist teaching shows me a different dimension that may be closer to what Jesus actually intended. Because Jesus doesn't say to just suck it up and don't complain. He says to take it as an opportunity to show a different way of responding. You're acting out of a desire to put me in my place, but I'm showing you how to be gracious and compassionate instead. I see how you are trapped by the way you are treating me. You are suffering, too.

The thing is, it's not easy to do, especially in the moment when you're insulted and pissed and all you want to do is strike back. In fact, I've been really bad at it this week. I've been in a couple of situations where I interpreted something as an insult, and I fumed and felt sorry for myself and whined. This shit ain't easy.

Buddhism offers another principle I find helpful, though. In the Buddhist teaching, you start out on things that are easier and you practice. You start with some negative thing that is unconnected to you, say an unkindness or unfairness that you know about through hearsay, something you don't feel particularly strongly about. You practice breathing in the negative emotions, and breathing out the positive. Then you gradually shift to things that are more personal, that really do get an instantaneous angry response out of you, and let yourself sit with that response.

Breathe it in, let it transform, breathe it out. You're not taking in the bad thing and sending nothing back out, you're actively transforming the bad energy into good energy. It's a skill.

One that I'm not good at. But I'm practicing. And if I can learn the skill, like all such learning, it's empowering. Love makes us powerful, not doormats.