Tonglen Collection: Taking and Giving

Ah, Tonglen. This is a wonderful and challenging practice - at least for me! But worth the effort...

Tonglen from Wikipedia
Tonglen is Tibetan for 'taking and giving', and it refers to a meditation practice found in Tibetan Buddhism.

In the practice, one visualizes taking onto oneself the suffering of others, and giving one's own happiness and success to others. As such it is a training in altruism in its most extreme form.

The function of the practice is to:

• reduce selfish attachment
• increase a sense of renunciation
• create positive karma by giving and helping
• develop loving-kindness and bodhicitta, which refers to all of the Six Perfections of giving, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom, which are the practices of a Bodhisattva.
  

The Practice of Tonglen - Pema Chodron
Transforming Confusion into Wisdom

All-Embracing Compassion: The Heart-Practice of Tonglen

Peter Fox, Tonglen - receiving and letting go
Methodology and stages

Dalando's Favorite Dharma Delicacy
"In with the bad and out with the good" the topsy-turvy world of TONGLEN

How It All Ends

Interesting and fast-paced logic. Worth a view. It'll hone your thinking...

Crop-circles: non-human, magical, or high-tech?

I had a book in the early 80s, maybe it was the Aquarian Conspiracy, that had crop circle pictures, but I haven't seen pictures of recent ones until this morning. These are wild!

This one appeared on July 7, 1996, just across from Stonehenge and is called the "Julia set." According to the account, it was made within a 45-minute time-window in the daytime. Given the detail and size, construction of this would normally have taken hours. Stonehenge has guards and many visitors, and you can see it is adjacent to a fairly busy highway. Plus there was a farmhand working the next field - but no one saw it made.

Jonah Ohayv has compiled photos of crop circles that appear more genuine to him. Check them out, if for no other reason than the cool patterns.