dharmalab.co · 17 hours ago

Breathe in Suffering, Breathe Out Happiness

The ancient Tibetan practice of tonglen - breathing in suffering, breathing out happiness - sounds, as Dr. Cortland Dahl puts it, "insane... if you're operating from your usual mindset, the one where the whole project of life is to secure your own well-being." Yet what he discovered over 25 years of practice, first through an inexplicable wave of blushing at a Boulder coffee shop and later through a health scare in Kathmandu, is that the very act of opening toward suffering - rather than bracing against it - reveals a steadiness underneath that ordinary self-protection never could. Tonglen didn't erase his fear or change his symptoms, but "the space around all of it changed completely," dropping him into a felt sense that neither he nor anyone else suffers alone. What this story quietly asks is whether the instinct to contract and guard is actually what makes hard moments harder - and whether the more radical, counterintuitive move might be the one that costs us nothing and gives everything away.