Quotes from Love on Every Breath

Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy

by Lama Palden Drolma with a foreword by Sylvia Boorstein

New World Library, Novato, California, 2019         231 pages

Love on Every Breath is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana meditation from the Shangpa lineage that combines breath, awareness, imagination, and an energetic transformation process. The mediation brings all these components together in a powerful way in order to open our hearts, to reveal and cultivate our kindness, love, compassion and wisdom. -- pages 3-4.

Step 3 of the meditation is Cultivating Awakened Mind, or what is also called Cultivating Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the heart essence of love, compassion, and kindness It is the altruistic intention to awaken in order to be able to alleviate suffering and bring happiness to all beings, regardless of religion, gender, color, or ethnicity, whether human or animal. There are traditional prayers that you can use for this, such as the ones in meditation steps 2 and 3, or you can use your own words.

In this meditation, we delve deeply into our hearts and connect with the part of us that wants the best for everyone. We open to and cultivate the full richness of our innate love and compassion for our loved ones and those with whom we identify, such as our family, our tribe, our country, or our type of people. We gradually expand to include others outside our usual circles. We gently open the door to the full glory of our innate love, extending it impartially and equally to all beings, including ourselves...

Spiritual practice does not only happen during meditation. Throughout each day, we can train ourselves to remember bodhicitta. For example, when we read the news in the morning, we can think: I want to lead people out of suffering, I want to awaken to be able to make a difference.  We don't need to feel powerless. It often seems like things are going in the wrong direction, but love is stronger. Truth is stronger.. If we continue to cultivate bodhicitta, it awakens our heart continuously so that our love and compassion get stronger in the face of any situation we meet. -- pages 95-96

Review submitted by Jennifer Knight

To visit the blog and see more reviews and quotes from books in the collection of Center for Sacred Sciences' Library, click here https://centerforsacredscienceslibrary.blogspot.com