pleasure. When we begin to breathe in the pain in-
stead of pushing it away, we begin to open our hearts
to what’s unwanted. When we relate directly in this
way to the unwanted areas of our lives, the airless
room of ego begins to be ventilated. In the same way,
when we open up our clenched hearts and let the
good things go—radiate them out and share them
with others—that’s also completely reversing the
logic of ego, which is to say, reversing the logic of suf-
fering. Lojong logic is the logic that transcends the
messy and unmessy, transcends pain and pleasure.
Lojong logic begins to open up the space and it be-
gins to ventilate this whole cocoon that we find our-
selves in. Whether you are breathing in or breathing
out, you are opening the heart, which is awakening
bodhichitta.
So now the technique. Tonglen practice has four
stages. The first stage is flashing openness, or flashing
absolute bodhichitta. The slogan “Rest in the nature
of alaya, the essence” goes along with this flash of
openness, which is done very quickly. There is some
sort of natural flash of silence and space. It’s a very
simple thing.
The second stage is working with the texture. You
visualize breathing in dark, heavy, and hot and
breathing out white, light, and cool. The idea is that
you are always breathing in the same thing: you are
essentially breathing in the cause of suffering, the
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