Even a Young Child Can Do Love on Every Breath
I have taught an abbreviated version of Love on Every Breath to children. Once I knew a lovely girl named Sarah, then three years old. Sarah was interested in spiritual things and had already learned how to sit quietly for some minutes in meditation. Sarah’s godmother brought her to me because Sarah had told her how much seeing certain things upset her. She felt sad when she saw other children hurt or in conflict on the playground. Sarah told me all about this. She was a loving child and was being cared for in a loving way. Sarah also recounted how she often saw dead animals on the road while in the car. This also made her sad. She wanted to know how to help them.
I told her that there was a meditation that can help in these situations. Then I showed her a crystal vajra and told her to imagine a vajra like this, made of light, in her heart. This vajra, I said, was all the Buddha’s love and power in her own heart. Then I told her to breathe the person or animal’s suffering into the vajra in her heart and imagine that instantly the vajra changed the suffering into healing love and white light. Then she should imagine that this white light was the love and healing energy of the buddhas, and she should send it out into the person or animal. I also taught her that she could do this for herself when she was sad or unhappy. She could breathe her own sadness and unhappiness into the vajra and imagine it instantly changing her feelings into ones of love, peace, and safety.
A few weeks later she came back to see me and happily told me that she really liked doing this practice and it helped her a lot. Sarah, at three years old, was able to do this short meditation practice, giving her something to do in these situations to benefit others and to help herself. This brought her much peace.
The abbreviated form of Love on Every Breath that I taught Sarah is a version of the practice that the Tibetans call the “pith essence,” and it’s the basis for my “On-the-Spot” meditations. These distill the most important elements of the meditation into its concise version, which can be done anytime, anywhere, by anyone, regardless of religion, age, or educational background. Whether you prefer this distilled form, the traditional form, or to modify the practice to fit your own spiritual path, this book will guide you in developing your own Love on Every Breath meditation.
Love on Every Breath offers a path to feel our innate love and wisdom and to bring these forward into our consciousness and interactions in daily life. Like all Buddhist meditations, it also helps us to realize reality as it is, known in Sanskrit as dharmata. This is the basis in Buddhism for the unfolding of wisdom.
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* Vajrayana, from Sanskrit, is the actual term for Tibetan Buddhism. Vajra means “indestructible” or “diamond” and refers to our indestructible diamond-like true nature that is undisturbed by birth and death. Yana means “vehicle,” which means a vehicle or path that takes us to enlightenment. There are three primary yanas in Buddhism: Theravadin, Mahayana (which includes Zen and Chan), and Vajrayana.
† Chenrezig’s name in Sanskrit is Avalokitesvara. I have chosen to use the Tibetan version, since this meditation has been primarily practiced in Tibet.
‡ A bodhisattva is one who dedicates their life to following the path of awakening in order to free all beings from suffering and to help establish all of us in enlightenment.
§ In Sanskrit, Mahayana means “Great Vehicle,” and it is one of the three yanas or “vehicles” of Buddhism. The Mahayana, the bodhisattva vehicle, is called “great” because its purpose is to liberate all beings.
‖ Tibetan Buddhism considers reality nondual because it is beyond dualistic conceptions, like self and other, or one and many.
⁋ Jetsunma is an honorific Tibetan title meaning “venerable” that is bestowed by the head of one’s lineage.
** As I mention, you can use a different awakened or divine being if desired; see “Love on Every Breath for Activists and Those of Other Traditions.”
*** In Sanskrit, sutra means a “spiritual discourse,” one preserved in the literature of that tradition. In Mahayana Buddhism, it refers to the words of the Buddha and other greatly realized teachers.
†† For more on dakinis, see Judith Simmer-Brown’s excellent book, Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism.
‡‡ Rinpoche is an honorific title literally meaning “precious one.” Either it is given to a person who is found to be an incarnation of an important teacher, or it is given due to a lama’s level of activity and realization.
Awakening, Buddha Nature, and Our Subtle Body
Your own mind, uncontrived, is the body of ultimate enlightenment. To remain undistracted within this is meditation’s essential point. Realize the great, boundless, expansive state.
— NIGUMA, FOREMOTHER OF THE SHANGPA LINEAGE, FROM HER SONG OF REALIZATION
Suzuki Roshi, the preeminent twentieth-century Zen master who helped establish Zen in America, once said, “Realizing emptiness is like drinking milk at the mother’s breast.” This means that resting in emptiness nourishes and sustains us. It enables us to grow. A mother nursing her baby is an image of profound connection. This counteracts the notion that realizing emptiness brings us to a disengaged, uncaring attitude, as if emptiness means, “It’s all empty, so nothing matters.” The vast open expanse, inseparable from awareness itself, is called Prajnaparamita, the Great Mother.
One of my other teachers, Kalu Rinpoche’s close beloved disciple, Bokar Rinpoche, once said to us, “There is the nothing-to-do and the must-to-do.” That is, there is nothing to do because we are already awakened, but what we must do is discover and realize this for ourselves; otherwise we remain caught in our habitual patterns of ignorance and suffering, failing to reach our full potential.
This section goes in depth into Buddhist teachings in order to set the stage for the Love on Every Breath meditation.
Philosophical Underpinnings
The Love on Every Breath meditation helps us to connect with our awakened nature of wisdom and love. It helps us live moment to moment from our inherent kindness and goodness. It helps us unlock the unlimited wisdom and love at the core of who we are.
Understanding the philosophical underpinnings of Buddhist meditation in general, and Vajrayana meditation in particular, fundamentally supports this process and enhances the power of our meditation to benefit ourselves and others. Buddhism at its core seeks to alleviate suffering. This is what motivated the Buddha to teach and what the entire path of Buddhist practice is designed to liberate us from. The word dharma in this context means “the teachings of the Buddha.” Dharma helps to alleviate the root of our suffering. Buddha taught that life is characterized by suffering, and the reason we suffer is because we are ignorant of the nature of reality and of who we truly are. In Buddhism, to awaken means that we penetrate the veil of ignorance to realize the true nature or truth of our mind and reality. All Buddhist meditations are designed to assist us to awaken. The Buddha taught that we inherently have the seed potential of enlightenment and, in fact, are already awakened. In a Buddhist context, the English words awakened and enlightened mean the same thing and are used interchangeably. I usually use the word awakened because it implies a process,