Taking the Suffering of Others
A student practicing tonglen wrote to Rinpoche saying she didn’t really understand what it meant to take on others' suffering.
Dear one,
First, you have to know the benefits of the bodhicitta practice; you have to have a big goal in mind. The purpose of life is to free all sentient beings from all sufferings and to cause them to have happiness, especially to bring them to enlightenment, to free them from all defilements and sufferings.
The next thing, in order to perfectly do that, is that you need the path to enlightenment. The door to enlightenment is bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the most important thing in life, not only for your own benefit but in order to eliminate all the defilements of countless other sentient beings, for everyone.
You need to know what bodhicitta is: it is renouncing oneself and cherishing other sentient beings. You need to understand this to be able to enjoy and accept the practice (tonglen). That depends on how much you see self-cherishing as the enemy. The more you see it as the enemy, the more you are able to do tonglen practice sincerely.
You are not only taking the suffering of others, you are taking all the undesirable things onto the ego and destroying the ego. The ego is the enemy of bodhicitta. If there is ego, there is no space in the mind for bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the wish-fulfilling, holy thought that brings all happiness for oneself and for every sentient being.
The more you understand this, the more you will enjoy taking the suffering of others and giving them all your happiness and merit. How this benefits other sentient beings is because the more you renounce the ego, the more you are able to practice bodhicitta. It makes it possible to enter the Mahayana path that eliminates both defilements, gross and subtle, and to attain omniscience, so you are able to become enlightened and do perfect works for sentient beings. You collect vast amounts of merit each time you take others' sufferings or give others your happiness. For example, each time you visualize giving your body to others, you collect so much merit. Each time you give your possessions, happiness, and merits to others, you collect vast amounts of merit. Giving all of these are the cause for achieving ultimate happiness. Each time we take others' sufferings, we purify many eons of negative karma, so we are able to achieve enlightenment soon, even in this life.
The actual benefit of taking others' suffering, the long term, ultimate benefit, is that you become enlightened for the benefit of all sentient beings. This benefit is enormous, like the vast sky, and what you can offer to each sentient being is like the limitless sky.
This is the main benefit of this practice. Then, it becomes more powerful purification than doing a three-month Vajrasattva retreat, with comforts and ego. You are doing the Vajrasattva retreat so you will not be born in the lower realms. This is not a very powerful purification or sacrifice for others. Sincerely taking others' suffering and its causes with strong compassion, just once, purifies more than doing a one-year Vajrasattva retreat.
With much love and prayer...