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Lama Yeshe teaching at Royal Holloway College, 1975, London, England. Photo by Dennis Heslop, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.
Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 9 from Freedom Through Understanding: “Giving and Taking on the Breath” by Lama Yeshe:
Totally changing the attitude of your ego-attachment’s attitude is very useful because the personality of attachment is limitless want: “I want every pleasure the universe has to offer.” And at all costs, attachment wants to avoid any unpleasant feelings whatsoever. So this time we act in completely the opposite way. Without the slightest hesitation, we send all our goodness, wisdom and joyful life energy – all our positive physical, mental and verbal energy – to others. We exhale through our right nostril and send joyful, blissful white light energy into all other beings’ left nostril without discrimination – not just our dear friend; all living beings in the universe.
Then bring their biggest problems, those that you don’t even like to see, let alone experience, in through your left nostril into your heart, where they smash into your ego and attachment, which completely vanish as a result; your ego completely freaks out.
Normally your ego’s attitude is such that if somebody who is not a friend barges uninvited into your house, you freak out: “How dare you come in without knocking?” Compared to your heart, this is nothing! So visualize bringing all sentient beings’ problems and sickness through your left nostril into your heart.
We call this kind of meditation tonglen. Tong means giving; len means taking. And we also say lung wai gyö par cha. Lung means breath: to give and take together with breathing.
Read all of Chapter 9 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:
Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “Giving and Taking on the Breath”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smggExPi6gI
From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF.
Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.