I watched Kyiv Soloists (Solistene), a documentary about a small Ukrainian orchestra on tour in Europe when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The movie follows some of the members and their lives over the next two years.
I found myself doing tonglen with the people in the audience and the ones in the movie, and later everyone involved in or impacted by the war, and also myself.
It’s a strong and moving story, and a reminder of how fragile all of our lives are. This world is mixed with ups and downs, shifts between situations our personality likes and doesn’t like, and it’s always in change and there is nowhere to arrive.
I can do my best to be a good steward of my own life, but I can’t change the inherently changing and unpredictable nature of life.
What I can do is transform my world, my experience of the world as it appears to me.
There are many ways to do that – inquiry, therapy, somatic work, and so on.
Heart-centered practices tend to be the most direct, in my experience.
And the one I find most effective, and am most drawn to, is tonglen. It can be profoundly transforming.