Tonglen Meditation Instructions

{From Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber}Visualize someone you know and love who is suffering -- an illness, a loss, depression, pain, anxiety, fear. As you breathe in, imagine all of that person's suffering -- in the form of dark, black, smokelike, tarlike, thick and heavy clouds -- entering your nostrils and traveling down into your heart. Hold that suffering in your heart. Then, on the outbreath, take all of your peace, freedom, health, goodness and virtue, and send it out to the person in the form of healing, liberating light. Imagine they take it all in and feel completely free, released and happy.Do that for several breaths.Then imagine the town that person is in, and on the inbreath, take in all the suffering of that town, and send back all of your health and happiness to everyone in it. Then do that for the entire state, the entire country, the entire planet, the universe. You are taking in all the suffering of beings everywhere and sending them back health and happiness and virtue.