Bel Canto & Tonglen
On the face of it, the two terms would not seem to have much in common. What in heaven’s name does bel canto have to do with tonglen, a Buddhist heart practice?
Tonglen came up on his blog when I wrote about tinnitus, which you can find here. Tonglen being mentioned in only a few posts, bel canto has appeared everywhere.
To know how the terms relate, you have to know what tonglen “does,” which entails “taking” and “giving.” You breathe what is bothering you into your heart as black smoke, then exhale light from the same center of your heart, transforming the darkness—visualization and breath coordination being key. You basically have to walk into whatever is bothering you and have compassion for yourself.
Why did I start this practice? Because I couldn’t keep taking a highly addictive drug in order to sleep any more, which I started taking after not being able to sleep more than a few hours at a time. I still use it—tonglen that is. It’s the one thing outside of the stimulation of music that enabled me to habituate to tinnitus itself.
What does tonglen have to do with bel canto?
If tonglen is the practice of grappling with difficult emotions and thoughts, a literal sensing of one’s inner state of being, bel canto involves that too, being a “listening for feeling and feeling for listening” deep instead one’s head; that of a grating, sometimes raspy, even phlegmy sound that once accepted like a grain of sand in a mollusk becomes one of Manuel García’s pearls on a string.
It’s also associated with the chest, and of course, I want to say heart, but that might be going too far. But perhaps not.
