Exchange yourself and others through envy, rivalry and pride
Imaginatively take another person’s position and look back at yourself from there, until self-cherishing loosens its grip.
Why it works
Śāntideva writes that without giving one’s own happiness in exchange for others’ suffering, neither awakening nor real joy is possible (8.131). His method (8.140) is to take the standpoint of someone below, equal to or above oneself and, from there, feel envy, rivalry or pride toward one’s own self. Patrul Rinpoche describes the result. Coming out of the meditation, one feels how painful it is to be on the receiving end of those attitudes, and one’s own envy, rivalry or arrogance subsides. The philosopher Nicolas Bommarito reads the exercise as a way to change one’s basic orientation to self and others by forcing one to take other people’s experience seriously.
How to do it
- Choose someone of lower status or fewer advantages than you. Imagine being them, looking at your actual self, and let their envy of you be felt from the inside.
- Come out of the role and notice what you now feel about your own envy of others.
- Choose someone of roughly equal standing. Imagine being them and regarding your actual self as a rival, from every angle, then come out and notice.
- Choose someone above you. Imagine being them looking down on your actual self with pride, then come out and notice how arrogance lands on its receiver.
- If the full exercise is too much, recite a short exchange verse instead, such as the one Patrul quotes from Bodhicaryāvatāra 10.56, and reflect on its meaning.
Evidence
The verses (Bodhicaryāvatāra 8.131, 8.140, 10.56) and the three-part envy, rivalry and pride meditation are given in Patrul Rinpoche’s Brightly Shining Sun. FPMT’s description of Geshe Sopa’s Lamrim Chenmo commentary names the “training to exchange self and other,” based on Śāntideva, as the second of the two bodhicitta methods. Bommarito’s chapter describes it as imagining the self from different points of view and cultivating responses from those perspectives. It works through perspective-taking, and no outcome study of this meditation was found. (mechanistic)
This is distinct from tonglen, the breath-based giving and taking of the lojong tradition, which has its own page. Patrul offers the verse recitation as a brief alternative, so the full exercise is not the only form.
Sources
- Patrul Rinpoche. The Brightly Shining Sun: A Step-by-Step Guide to Meditating on the Bodhicaryāvatāra, trans. Adam Pearcey (2004; revised 2007 and 2019). Lotsawa House.
- Sopa, G. L., with Newman, B. (2008). Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Vol. 3: The Way of the Bodhisattva — A Commentary on Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo. Boston: Wisdom Publications. (Publisher description, FPMT Foundation Store.)
- Bommarito, N. (2020). Exchanging self and other. In Seeing Clearly: A Buddhist Guide to Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
Common mistake
Using the imagined envy or contempt as more fuel for self-criticism (“see, they’re right to look down on me”). The exercise is meant to show how these attitudes hurt their target, so that you stop aiming them at others, not to confirm a low view of yourself.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
- Tell the wish to go from setting out on the journey
Notice whether your bodhicitta is still a wish (aspiring) or has become a way of acting (engaging), and let one grow into the other.
- Hold relative and ultimate bodhicitta together
Pair the heartfelt wish to benefit beings with the recognition that nothing, including that wish, is as solid as it seems.
- Recognise beings as your mother, remember their kindness, wish to repay it
Lay the first three links of the sevenfold instruction: see others as having once cared for you, recall that care, and let the wish to repay it arise.
- Carry love and compassion into the superior intention
Complete the sevenfold chain: from love and compassion, take personal responsibility for others’ welfare, and from that the wish to awaken arises.
- Equalise yourself and others
See plainly that everyone, like you, wants happiness and does not want suffering, so there is no principled reason to put yourself first.
- Recite the refuge and bodhicitta aspiration
Begin practice, and your day, by voicing the aspiration in a short traditional verse, so the intention is renewed rather than assumed.
- Dedicate whatever good came of it
Close each session, or each day, by turning whatever was good in it toward the awakening and welfare of all beings.
- Work with “who am I to aspire to this?”
When the aspiration feels absurdly too big for someone like you, treat that feeling itself as part of the practice rather than a verdict.
Related concepts
- Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending
Moving toward suffering on the breath — Tibetan Buddhism’s radical compassion practice
- Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
The 59 slogans and their practical application to everyday adversity and compassion
- Metta Bhavana: The Practice of Loving-Kindness
Systematic cultivation of goodwill toward self, others, and all beings
- Karuṇā: Compassion Meditation in the Theravāda Tradition
The second divine abiding, practised the way the Theravāda commentaries lay it out
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