Tonight it’s prayers for Nice. At the end of July last year Anne Mei and I spent two evenings walking through the crowds on the seaside promenade in Nice. That experience makes the horror of tonight’s attack much more real to me. Last year Anne Mei and I walked down steps from the promenade to the rocky beach where families fled in the dark tonight to hide from the carnage on the road above.
There is a Tibetan Buddhist practice called tonglen in which we breath in the suffering of others and breath out lovingkindness. Here is a link to a YouTube video in which Pema Chödren leads us in tonglen for “a world falling apart.” We can do tonglen for all those who have died from violence this year. Each time we breath in we can name where they died—Nice … Dallas … Baton Rouge … Baghdad … Dhaka … Orlando … Paris … —and breath out lovingkindness for them and all their loved ones who still suffer from their loss.
Yes!