Train without bias, that's the trick. Train without bias, without the labels. This is supported by the whole tonglen practice and lojong teaching, which encourage us to see bias when it comes up and begin to connect with how painful that is, to feel the prejudice, the resentment, the judgment. It's a powerful, compassionate teaching because it respects our intelligence and our innate good heart. It simply says, "Begin to see what you do, and don't necessarily try to change it; just see it." That's how things begin to change. When we say, "Train without bias," the first step is to meditate on bias when you see it arising. This is the same as "Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment." Then one begins to be able to train meticulously and pervasively in all situations.

Often tonglen is taught exactly as this slogan describes -as a way of training pervasively and meticulously with everyone. You can do this practice in any situation. You start with yourself. You can extend the practice to situations in which compassion spontaneously arises, exchanging yourself for someone you want to help. Then you move on to a slightly more difficult area.

This slogan is saying you should extend this practice to everyone, pervasively, not excluding anyone. Move the practice out to what are commonly called neutrals. These are probably the most frequent relationships that we have. They're people we never get to know and aren't even interested in. They're the ones who sit on the sidewalks and don't have any homes, whom we walk past very fast because it's too painful. They're the other people who are also walking by very quickly. Beginning to do tonglen for the ones we haven't noticed might be a difficult practice, but it could be the most valuable-to begin as you walk through the streets of your life to look at the people that you didn't notice before and become curious about them.

When we encounter life situations that spontaneously evoke compassion, it is not necessary to go through all four stages. It's fine to begin with the third stage, the stage of breathing in the pain in the situation that confronts us and breathing out something that will help. It's fine to breathe in the pain and send out relief or love. There is no need to do the other parts-flashing absolute bodhichitta or working with the black, heavy, and hot and white, light, and cool. These can be skipped in daily life when you do tonglen on the spot.

The key to compassionate action is this: everybody needs someone to be there for them, simply to be there.

A friend was severely burned and disfigured. Later she was able to have plastic surgery to improve her looks, but there was a long time when it was difficult to look at her. This was a time of intense isolation. The nurses would just pop into the room and say cheery things and then get out of there as fast as they could. The doctors would march in and say efficient things and look at her charts, but not at her. All who encountered her kept their distance because the sight of her was too troubling, too disturbing. This was even true of her family and friends. People made their duty calls, but there was some sense of not wanting to relate with the horror of this disfigured person. Finally some hospice people started to come. They would sit there and hold her hand, just be there. They didn't know what to say or what she really needed, but they weren't afraid of her, and she realized that what people really need is for others not to be afraid of them and not to distance themselves from them.

That's what tonglen provides-a support for us just to be there with another human being and try to communicate. Sometime, there's nothing to be said and nothing to be done. Then the deepest communication of all is just to be there.

The practice goes further. We start with the self, extend out to situations where compassion naturally arises, move out further to this area of neutrals, and then we move to enemies. "Be grateful to every Juan." To be truthful, probably no one in this room feels ready to do tonglen for an enemy. just the word ENEMY is a problem, a label with a lot of emotion behind it, a lot of anger behind it, and a lot of soft spot behind it. Basically you have to start where you are with your loathing or whatever it is you feel, but with an aspiration to widen the circle of compassion.

I've found in my own history of working with this practice of awakening bodhichitta that the circle of compassion widens at its own speed and widens spontaneously; it's not something you can make happen. It's definitely not something you can fake. But I guess there's a little bit of encouragement to at least experiment with faking it occasionally by seeing what happens when you try to do tonglen for your enemy. There's a lot of encouragement just to try this and see what happens when your enemy is standing in front of you or you're intentionally bringing up the memory of your enemy in order to do tonglen in the meditation hall. Think of this simple instruction: what would it take to be able to communicate with my enemy? What would it take to be able to have my enemy hear what I'm trying to say, and what would it take for me to be able to hear what he or she is trying to say to me? How to communicate from the heart is the essence of what tonglen is about.

You can extend even further to all sentient beings, which involves seeing that this practice is extraordinarily vast. Of course, we could use the notion of "all sentient beings" to distance ourselves from pain, to make the immediate, relative situation more abstract and far away. Someone said to me in all seriousness, "I have a very easy time doing tonglen for all sentient beings, but I have a little trouble doing it for my husband." Doing tonglen for all sentient beings doesn't have to be separate from doing it for yourself and your immediate situation. That's the point that has been made again and again. When you connect with your own suffering, reflect that countless beings at this very moment are feeling exactly what you feel. Their story line is different, but the feeling of pain is the same. When you do the practice both for all sentient beings and for yourself, you begin to realize that self and other are not actually different.

From START WHERE YOU ARE by Pema Chdrn, 1994.
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.