from my journal for early June. It’s very strange, I typed it into the computer just as it is here. I put it under June 6, but in the handwritten notebook it’s not there. I looked through both earlier and later entries and couldn’t find it. A mystery. But the passage is true no matter when it was written.
3rd cup of tea: writing practice. thinking about doing Tong-len for the earth. I find it very easy, which is a surprise because when I first tried breathing in someone’s pain, it was too difficult. But I love the earth, I have no distrust of my ability to love the earth, it’s easy to breathe in her pain because I’m already feeling her pain. And it’s easy to breathe out “comfort” in the form of a vision of a healthy planet.
“Tong-len” is a Buddhist practice. In Wikipedia it says: “In the practice, one visualizes taking in the suffering of oneself and of others on the in-breath, and on the out-breath giving recognition, compassion, and succor to all sentient beings.[3][4] As such it is a training in altruism.[3][5]”