Taking and Sending and the Four Immeasurables

From: Four Immeasurables 6
Full Transcript
Audioclip (NOTE: this is a long clip with the quote below starting about 15 minutes into the audio)

One way of looking at taking and sending--Mahayana mind training--is that it combines all the four immeasurables into a very simple breath-based practice. And so that’s what we’re going to be looking at in taking and sending.

And it’s very simple to describe. You practice equanimity by doing taking and sending with all sentient beings—not just a preferred group. When you’re giving away your own happiness and joy and goodness and everything, that’s the practice of loving-kindness. When you’re taking in their pain and suffering, and negativity, and fears, and hatred, and so forth, that’s the practice of compassion. You’re being present with that. And taking joy in this process of exchange is the practice of joy. So there are all four just right in the practice. And so it’s a very wonderful practice.

I practiced taking and sending quite a bit before doing the three-year retreat, but in the three-year retreat we had two months on taking and sending, which was a very long time given the program. And I spent the first month just doing loving-kindness and compassion because Kongtrul said you really need this as a basis. So I thought, okay, let me do two weeks on loving-kindness and two weeks on compassion.

And I found that it really changed everything—changed a tremendous amount. And it certainly changed my whole relationship with taking and sending. So I’ve always felt it’s a very, very important preparation for taking and sending as well as being a very potent practice in its own right—four immeasurables.

Connection between Taking and Sending and Chö

From:  Chö 1
Full transcript
Audioclip

At the beginning of the first three-year retreat I did, a very distinguished lama of the Kagyu tradition came to visit us. A really extraordinary person: very quiet spoken, very, very quiet presence. And we had just started practicing chö. So, it was very much on our minds. And so we said, “Could you explain chö to us?” And he went, “Oh, oh, it’s so long since I’ve practiced chö.” Because he was in his 80s at this point. He said, “Oh, it’s probably fifty years, oh, I don’t think I can remember anything, ah.”

And then this is what he said: “The secret practice of chö is mahamudra,” which in our parlance is direct awareness. “The inner practice of chö is taking and sending. The outer practice of chö is offering your body to gods and demons.”

This is one of the reasons that I wanted to include chö in our work here in this retreat, even though it’s a whole other body of teaching. Because of its intimate connection with taking and sending.

Now, tomorrow, in the teaching we’re going to be talking about how to transform adversity into the path of awakening. And there are particular instructions of how to do this. And several of those instructions refer more or less to directly to chö. So, that’s another reason I wanted you to have this background.

Note:  For more background on Chö read the entire transcript and/or listen to the full recording. 

Forming a relationship with walled-off material

From: A Trackless Path 2
Transcript
Audioclip

Gary: Just curious Ken, about how chö could be possibly--I mean, I know this is all individual, but in terms of dealing with the walled-off material and looking at the primary practice and the steps you've talked especially about--you know, opening your heart--I'm wondering if there's any way someone can incorporate that practice.

Ken: In chö? 

Gary: Well, chö and in a certain step in the primary practice if that's possible.

Ken: Well, take a step back. One way to view taking and sending, or tonglen is, it's a way of forming a relationship with elements of our experience from which we are alienated. 

Student: Can you say that again? 

Ken: It's a way of forming a relationship with elements of our experience from which we're alienated. So, for instance, we don't really like our anger so with taking and sending we take in the anger of all sentient beings and give joy to them. It's a way of forming a relationship with anger. You follow? 

Chö is a dramatic enactment of taking and sending. So those parts of our experience from which we're extremely alienated, usually described as the "karmic debt collectors," we invite and we give them what we're most attached to--our own body. So it's a way of forming a relationship with those aspects of our experience from which we're most alienated. Follow? 

Now if one looks at the cultivation of attention as the sort of central trunk of practice we may find, and often do, that we run into things in us--and sometimes very large portions--which we don't have any way of accessing or working with directly. And then we use special techniques such as taking and sending or chö or yidam practice or four immeasurables or whatever to work on things quite explicitly so that certain qualities and certain abilities develop so that we can open to those experiences. 

And for some people, those practices just speak to them more powerfully so they go with it. They work with those. 

Gary: So the idea is to be able to stay relaxed and rest while your doing those practices? 

Ken: Very definitely. Very definitely. The power of resting is extraordinary. Tense your hand and touch the table. And if you then relax your hand and touch the table you'll have two different experiences. And which of those do you have the more complete experience of the table? It's the same principle applies. And so whenever you find yourself hardening that actually is something to pay attention to. Okay? Because you're hardening against something. One always hardens in order to avoid experiencing something. 

Gary: Even while doing taking and sending and power chö. Right? 

Ken: Definitely. Yeah. I mean, if you're hardening doing taking and sending there's something over there you don't want to experience. Yep.

Self and Separation

Self and Separation (from What to Do about Christmas? 00:25:33.70 - 00:27:16.60)

(download into iTunes)

This specific form of Mind Training is aimed at undoing what is called self-cherishing or to put it in more modern language, taking care of ourselves first. And that’s ordinarily how we approach situations.

What do I need here? What do I want here? How can I get it? We get a fair amount of reinforcement from our culture to approach things this way. But when we do that — and there’s also a very deeply conditioned thing, you know, about survival and all of that thing, to focus on ourselves first.

But when we do that — when we focus on ourselves first we immediately create a separation based on the sense of self from experience. And that introduces an imbalance and the more that we function under that imbalance, the more out of balance it gets.

When we open to the totality of feelings in a situation, not only our own but also everybody else’s, and I want to emphasize this doesn’t mean excluding our own but including everything, then as Karen was saying, “well, we know where to go. We know what to do.” But now it’s not based on a sense of an I separate from experience, but based on a sense of being in experience. This makes sense to you?

Note:  The "specific form of Mind Training"mentioned in this clip and quote is this Taking and Sending exercise.

Taking and Sending

Ken explains and introduces Taking and Sending in several podcasts with different degrees of detail. Here's an introduction from What to Do about Christmas.

Taking and Sending (from What to Do about Christmas? (00:18:53.00 - 00:24:27.30)

Ken: One of the more powerful techniques that I know which I think is particularly appropriate for this time of year is the technique of taking and sending. Now taking and sending is a specific technique from the genre of mind training in the Tibetan tradition.

The way mind training techniques work is that they bring a particular perspective and approach to the world into friction with our habituated way of approaching the world, and that friction generates heat and if you can stay in the heat that fuels your attention and you can experience things completely.

So our next meditation together will build on what we’ve just done.

As you breathe in, take in all of the feelings of regret, shame, guilt, criminality, negativity, you know the whole bit from all other beings. Now if you want to make this a bit more specific--because all other beings is a bit big for most of us--start with your family, say. Because there’s a lot of family stuff that goes around at this time.

Take in all of their feelings of shame and regret and experience them for them. Experience those feelings for them. So that they are free of it. Just as some of you found out when you experience it completely it’s freed.

So you are going to experience their feelings completely. And everything that you feel good about, that you feel you’ve accomplished, that you feel good about yourself over the last year as you are now, this is what you give to other people so that they experience it completely.

Now we make this a little easier for ourselves by imagining that all of those negative and painful and difficult feelings take the form of black smoke and come in as we breath in through our right nostril and into our heart.

And all of those good feelings things that we enjoy and feel good about and makes you feel warm and open and clear, have a place in the world etc., all of those take the form of moonlight coming out of our heart and going to them out through the left nostril and going to them.

So you don’t have to do a lot of thinking here and that’s one of the things that many people fall into in taking and sending. They do a lot of thinking. Just take a couple of feelings and use that breath coming in to feel what is painful or difficult or disturbing completely. And the light going out so that you feel what is positive and joyful and happy and spacious and all of that.

And what’s very important here that I’ve found is do both with each breath. Don’t concentrate on the one because those of you who are more comfortable feeling bad will just go, [heavily] “Uh! Uh! Uh!” and those who are more comfortable feeling good will go, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” and it gets totally out of balance. So you do each one with each breath.

Any questions? Trudy.

Trudy: When you say taking in all their shame and bad feelings and negativity, you mean as you imagine they feel it?

Ken: Well, what else are you going to work with?

Trudy: Your own.

Ken: Pardon?

Trudy: You could work with your feelings generated by the difficulties you’re having and you know try to...

Ken: No, you’re taking their feelings. And the result of that is you are going to feel your own more completely, okay? And also in the other direction as you give away your own happiness and joy you actually have to experience it. Causes a lot of trouble for some people.

Student: And they’ll get happy.

Ken: Yeah.

Student: They’ll experience their own [unclear], too.

Ken: Well that’s more of the joy aspect. Because this exchange is taking place you feel really good about it.

Okay? Any other questions? Okay. Let’s do this together. Yes?

Student: My right nostril... at the moment--does that matter? Cause at the moment my dominant nostril is the left.

Ken: Just imagine it; whether the breath actually goes through that nostril or not doesn’t matter.

Student: Then you imagine it coming out through the heart?

Ken: The black comes in through the right [nostril] and the light goes out through the left [nostril].

Student: Did you mention heart?

Ken: Yes both, one comes into your heart and the other comes out of your heart.

Student: But you don’t transform it?

Ken: It’s not a transformation of one into the other. No, you get, you know, it’s just the old thing we have in L.A., in with the bad air and out with the good air! [Laughter]

[Meditation]