This is a practice that can help when you are suffering from deep sorrow and grief, adapted from a practice given to Sogyal Rinpoche by Jamyang Khyentse and recorded in ‘The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying’.
Described as a practice for people who are going through emotional torment or mental anguish and breakdown, the practice can bring both relief and solace.
1. Invocation
Invoke in the sky in front of you the presence of someone, or some enlightened being, whom inspires you the most, and consider that this being is the embodiment of all sages and worthy teachers. Even if you cannot imagine in your mind's eye any one form, try and find a presence, a sense of an infinite power, compassion, and blessing.
2. Calling Out
Open your heart and call to presence a sense of the pain and suffering you have felt. Hold the sense that the teacher or sage can hold all this suffering with you, can measure and tend to the needs expressed in the pain.
3. Filling the Heart with Bliss
Imagine and know now that the teacher you are crying out to responds, with all his or her love, compassion and wisdom. Imagine a light as nectar, streaming from the teacher, filling your heart up, completely, and transforming all your suffering into bliss.
An example of a sage that Sogyal Rinpoche draws upon is Padmasambhava, simply sitting in meditation posture, wrapped in his gown and robes, exuding an enchanting feeling of warm and cozy comfort, and with a loving smile on his face. In this emanation he is called "Great Bliss." His hands lie relaxed in his lap, cradling a cup made from the top of a skull. It is full of the nectar of Great Bliss, swirling and sparkling, the source of all healing. He sits serenely on a lotus blossom, ringed by a shimmering sphere of light.
Think of him as infinitely warm and loving, a sun of bliss, comfort, peace, and healing. Open your heart, let out all your suffering; cry out for help. Imagine now thousands of rays of light streaming out of his body or from his heart: Imagine that the nectar of Great Bliss in the skull cup in his hands overflows with joy and pours down over you in a continuous stream of soothing, golden liquid light. It flows into your heart, filling it and transforming your suffering into bliss.
4. Helping Those Who Have Died
As you do this practice again and again, filling your heart with bliss, it will be the case that your suffering will dissolve in the confident peace of the nature of your mind. You will realize, with joy and delight, that the sages and teachers are not outside of you but always with you, inseparable from the nature of your mind.
Imagine you are sending this blessing, the light of healing compassion, to your loved one/s who has/have died.
It’s a Buddhist teaching, and the Christian symbol of the ultimate split between life and death with Jesus nailed to a wooden cross, that offers to us a sense of wisdom in suffering – suffering nurtures it’s own teaching, on the nature of compassion, for ourselves, for others. Accepting pain, as it is, hands us a priceless gift: the chance of discovering what lies behind sorrow.
"Grief," Rumi wrote, "can be the garden of compassion."
If you keep your heart open, vulnerable, pain can become an ally in the life search for love and wisdom.
Rilke wrote, the protected heart that is "never exposed to loss, innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness; only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free, through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery."
I've spent a good part of the day today wrapped in grief, with my friend Gilly, a close friend lost her son in a car accident on the weekend.
He was three years old.
May the divine assistance remain always with him.
Even in death; even in death.
Ref:
Sogyal Rinpoche. (2002). The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. London: Rider
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