Keep Breathing

Christian Tonglen Meditation

Mar 17, 2023

woman in white tank top sitting on green grass field during daytime — Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash

There is power in the breath. When it is free, it brings life. When it is constricted, it brings death. I am reminded of the cry of Eric Garner, choked to death by Officer Daniel Pantaleo while gasping, “I can’t breathe.” How do we begin to metabolize the suffering of Eric and so many others? How do we keep breathing?

Let us begin with a beautiful passage from the Gospel of John, an account of an appearance of the Risen Christ to his disciples:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors were locked where the disciples were, for fear of the Judean authorities, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:19-23)

I want to call attention to the action of Jesus breathing upon his disciples. He is absorbing their fear and confusion and metabolizing it into peace and empowerment. The holy breath actually transmutes and transmits energy. It is the fulfillment of the first Beatitude: blessed are the poor in spirit – those whose breath is constricted – for theirs is the kingdom of heaven – for they shall breath freely again in the spaciousness and power of Reality. The Risen Christ breathes with and upon the disciples, helping them to realign their breathing with the breath of God.

Notice, too, that with this healing breath the disciples receive a commission. They are sent to share this peace with others: to forgive their sins, to untie the knots that bind them and constrict their breathing. This holy spirit or holy breath accompanies and empowers all of the healing actions of Jesus and his disciples. Read the two volume account of Jesus and the early Church in Luke-Acts, and notice how often the holy breath is present. We breathe and we act in sync with the beating heart of God.

We are to breathe Christ’s peace into the world. This is meant quite literally. When our breathing is calm, free, and spacious we are able to embody and transmit peace. This breathing is rooted in our meditation practice, and we can consciously integrate this intention into our meditation practice and into our life. It is here that we find the experiential grounding of a Christian practice of Buddhist Tonglen Meditation.

The Buddhist practice as described by Pema Chödrön is quite simple:

1. Rest your attention in a state of openness and stillness, opening to bodchitta, the heart-mind awakened to wisdom and compassion for the sake of all sentient beings.

2. Bringing your attention to the breath, breathe in feelings of heat, darkness, and heaviness – a sense of claustrophobia, and breathe out feelings of coolness, light, and buoyancy – a sense of freshness. Breathe in negative energy with every pore of your body, and breathe our positive energy with every pore of your body, aligned with the intake and release of breath.

3. Begin to focus on a personal situation that is painful to you: someone who is suffering that you want to help. Breathe in their suffering and release healing energy. If you are doing tonglen for a refugee, breathe in their disorientation and fear, and breathe out clarity and security. You can then begin to extend the practice to all refugees.

4. Continue to expand the range of your compassion as much as you are able. Extend it to others who are suffering, to your enemies, encompass the entire planet.

Chödrön writes,

Tonglen can extend infinitely. As you do the practice, your compassion naturally expands over time, and so does your realization that things are not as solid as you thought, which is a glimpse of emptiness. As you do this practice, gradually at your own pace, you will be surprised to find yourself more and more able to be there for others, even in what used to seem like impossible situations.[1]

As Christians, we begin this practice by awakening the heart-center to Christ consciousness, to the heart-to-heart connection with God. St. Isaac of Syria, a 7^th Century saint, describes this heart-to-heart connection in this way:

It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation – for men and women, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for every creature. When a person with a heart such as this thinks of the creatures or looks at them, his eyes are filled with tears. An overwhelming compassion makes his heart grow small and weak, and he cannot endure to hear or see any suffering, even the smallest pain, inflicted upon any creature. Therefore, he never ceases to pray, with tears, even for the irrational animals, for the enemies of truth, and for those who do him evil, asking that they may be guarded and receive God's mercy . . . he prays with a great compassion, which rises up endlessly in his heart until he shines again and is glorious like God.[2]

We breathe in the suffering of the world and offer it to God – we don’t hold on to it ourselves, we allow it to move through us – and we release healing love flowing from the heart of God with the out breath. In this way, we unite ourselves with Christ’s redemptive suffering for the sake of the healing of the world. We can say with St. Paul, “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s affliction for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Colossians 1:24)

Andrew Harvey suggests that you visualize the suffering of the person or situation you are focusing on as a ball of black smoke arising from their stomach. Breathe it into your heart, and allow the black smoke to dissipate against a clear blue sky, and breathe out the light of Christ into the person. You might do the same, focusing on a situation that you are struggling with yourself. As you move through the practice, expand the scope of your compassion until the whole earth is emitting this ball of black smoke, and you are receiving it into your Sacred Heart, releasing the light of Christ over the face of the whole earth with each out-breath.[3]

You might close with a prayer for healing for the earth and all people, and give thanks for the peace and healing you have shared. This energetic field of compassion transfigures your own consciousness and the atmosphere of the world, helping the collective body to detox from the negative energies of fear, hate, and greed that cause and exacerbate so much suffering. Breathing easier, we can act with power and freedom for healing and justice in the world. We breathe with and through the suffering of the world together.

Awakened Heart

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