At this particular time, I meet many people who find themselves disturbed and distressed by watching the news, as global events erupt around the world. In many of my global talks, feelings of overwhelm, powerlessness, disturbed sleep with disturbing dreams, anger, depression, despair have all been shared.
These patterns are echoed in the research we did on responses to the climate crisis (Whybrow et al 2023) and in my own experience. What has made an enormous difference for myself over the years has been spiritual practices that help me stay open hearted and with eyes wide-open to what is happening in the world, without being consumed by it.
In my recent book “Beauty in leadership and Coaching: and its role in transforming human consciousness” (Routledge 2025), I quote the great writer Victor Frankl who was a survivor of the holocaust concentration camps. That experience taught him, that you cannot control what is going to happen to you in life, and the only area of choice is in how you respond. We can choose how we respond to what life throws at us, and to what we experience through the news and social media.
In his beautiful book ‘Ethics for the New Millenium’, the Dalai Lama (1999:234), writes:
We can reject everything else, religion, ideology, all received wisdom, but we cannot escape the necessity of love and compassion. This, then, is my one true religion, my simple faith.
For many years in my work as a coach, consultant, psychotherapist, and mentor, I have found the Buddhist practice of Tonglen helpful when I am faced with suffering, whether this be my own, that of a person I am meeting with, or that which I encounter on the news.
In the practice of Tonglen, on the in breath, you focus on breathing in the suffering of the other person, imagining it as a dark or heavy energy, and let it flow right through you, transforming it into a light warm force. Then, as you breathe out, visualize breathing out and sending love, healing, and compassion to those who are suffering, as clean pure light. The great Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:
Compassion is a mind that removes suffering that is present in the other …Anyone who has made us suffer is undoubtedly suffering too. We only need to follow our breathing and look deeply, and naturally we will see his suffering.” (Hahn 1992: 41-42)
As my work has taken me into much larger organizational and governmental systems, I began to realize that most suffering and conflict is at root relational and systemic, although it is experienced personally. Suffering emerges out of relationships, between people, and between groups, as well as between an individual and what they take into their body from the world around them, as they eat, drink, breathe and experience the world through their senses.
Suffering also flows historically through the generations. As it says in the Bible, the sins of the parents shall be visited on the sons and daughters, for the next seven generations. More recently we have been discovering through the sciences of biology and psychology, more about trans-generational trauma.
When we only locate suffering in individuals, we can very quickly move to seeing the world as made up of victims and persecutors. This leads to taking sides and dividing people into, victims who need our compassion and support, and persecutors, who we judge, react against, fear or even hate. Out reptilian, amygdala brain becomes activated, triggering basic reflex reactions of, fear, fight, flight, freeze, flock or fragment.
I used to find myself watching the news and moved to sorrow for victims one moment and anger and rage at people I held responsible the next. At times I would shout at certain politicians when they came on screen. But our base reactions such as fear and anger, provide the nutrients for growing further conflict.
Recently I have heard from many friends and colleagues, who say they can no longer watch the news as they become too emotionally disturbed and then find it hard to sleep. This flight response is the other side of the fight and anger.
I decided to explore further how we can stay with our eyes, hearts and minds wide open to what is happening in the world, and yet stay centred, and compassionate to every person and group in the conflict. From this experiential inquiry I gradually developed ‘Systemic Tonglen’ and invite you to now experiment with this practice with me.
- Find a quiet space in your house or outside in a place in nature you find peaceful and healing. Sit, with both feet firmly on the ground beneath you, your back and spine stretched and upright, your arms resting at your sides and your palms and fingers open and facing up and your eyes closed, or half closed with a soft gazed down in front of you.
- Relax your breathing and let it slow down naturally. Gradually watch you thoughts and feelings arrive and leave, without judgement, reaction, or attachment, as if they are clouds gently moving across the sky .
- Once you are centred and relaxed, I invite you to picture the leaders of each side of a major conflict alongside each other. Breath in the suffering that is being daily experienced in the space of conflict between them.
Example:
Picture in your mind an image of President Putin of Russia and then hold that image and bring alongside that an image of President Zelensky of Ukraine. Hold them equally in mind. On your in breath, breath in the conflict and suffering that exists in the space between them. Let it flow through you, without becoming attached or reactive to it. Now on the out breath, breath out through your mouth loving compassion, imagining it as clear, clean, fresh, open light.
- Imagine and picture behind them the groups and peoples they represent and the pressures that are flowing into them from all the people they lead – the fears, the hopes, the wishes, the neediness etc.
Example:
Behind President Putin imagining the fears of the Russian peoples as they see the Western powers influence gradually taking over the countries that used to be part of the USSR, and the forces of Nato, getting closer and closer to their borders. Behind Zelensky, the fears of the Ukrainian peoples, of being bombed, their families dying, their homes destroyed and coming under the military rule of Russia. Breath in these dark heavy feelings, let them flow through you and be transformed as you breath out from your mouth clear, translucent light of love and compassion to the space between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples.
- Behind these groups and peoples with their emotional needs and pressures, imagine the seven generations that have come before this leader and these people. Imagine what has happened to these people and this community over the last two hundred years, and how these flow into the emotions and this flows into the leaders.
Example:
At the third level, behind the two leaders, and then behind all the millions of people they represent, imaging the seven generations of ancestors. Include anything you know or sense about the history of the two countries, past invasions, the suffering from the loss of influence and importance, the experience of being dominated and controlled, the enormous destruction, death and suffering in both countries in both the second and first world wars.
Again, breath this in through your nose, as a river of dense dark air, allowing it to flow into and through you. Then breathe out to the space between the leaders, followers and ancestors, clear, fresh, translucent light.
- Now do one more tonglen breath, holding the space between all three levels of opposing sides, breathing in the dark smoke of suffering, letting it flow through you, to the earth beneath you, that has an enormous capacity to hold and transmute the suffering of all living beings. Then imagining you are bringing down fresh clear air from the skies above you and from your heart breathing out the love and compassion, filling the space where the conflict lives.
- If it is helpful, you can end by saying out loud: “May love and compassion flow in this space between.”
Having practised this over several months, my capacity to watch the news with an empathic open heart, and not become stirred up, judgemental and reactive, has gradually expanded. I can now even watch the news late in the evening and still sleep peacefully.
My hope is that it can help you in the same way, and we can all reduce how our emotional reactivity is feeding the current and future conflicts of the world.
This essence of this beautifully expressed in the ancient Rabbinical teaching that says:
When you are filled with compassion,
There is no self to oppose another
And no other to stand against oneself.
(Quoted in Mathew Fox 2001: 302)
By experiencing all the connections in Systemic Tonglen, separation and differences melt away.
Peter Hawkins, The Padleigh Valley, April 2025.
(Peter runs advanced retreats that incorporate this and other important practices two or three times a year. The 2025 retreats are almost fully booked and the 2026 retreats are now booking! https://renewalassociates.co.uk/training-and-qualifications/advanced-retreats/ )
References:
Mathew Fox (2001) One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths. Dublin: Gateway Books
Tich Nhat Hahn ( 1992) Peace in Every Step. New York: Bantam.
Peter Hawkins (2025) Beauty in Leadership and Coaching: and its role in transforming human consciousness. London: Routledge
Dalai Lama ( 1999) Ethics for the New Millenium. New York: Riverhead Books.
