"It is simply one of the most sacred and powerful instructions from all ancient times," I said. "It ties together the breath, that closest sister of the inner winds, and quite nearly the most potent thought of all—kindness—sending them combined into a direct attack upon the very essence of the choke-points inside that make us sick and unhappy."

"Quite nearly the most potent thought?" asked the Captain. I heard what he was saying: Why not start with the most potent thought?

"It's coming," I said, like Katrin used to do. "First things first." Then I took him through some of his poses, almost like putting oil on the axle of a cart before you climb aboard to start a trip. After he had rested and warmed his body down, I had him get in position for silent sitting. He did quite well, even down to trying to push his bottom through the floor to get absolutely straight.

I was really very proud of him, my first real student, because he did the one thing that every successful student of anything has to do: he took what I had taught him home and practiced it there on his own, modestly but very steadily, to the best of his personal capacity. I could not have asked for more.

When he was very still, and his breath nice and quiet, I said, "Look inside of your chest now—where your heart is.

"Inside your heart is a tiny red flame, like the flame at the top of a candle. This flame is the power of our selfishness—the habit we have of taking care of ourselves first, and neglecting what others need or want." I waited for a moment until he had it clear.

"Now pretend that you are sitting right in front of the Sergeant, at his home. But he can't see you; you are invisible." I paused again.

"Look into the Sergeant's heart. Right there in the middle is a dark, rotten little pool of blackness. It is his sadness, it is his pain; it is the reason why he drinks, and it is his drinking." Another pause.

"You want to take this pain away from him, forever. It's the compassion we spoke about before; it is the real reason why you are doing yoga. And you decide that you want to take his black pain away so badly that you would even take it into yourself, if it meant you could save him from it." Pause, a longer pause. Compassion, even pretend compassion, is so hard for us.

"And so you begin to take say seven long, slow breaths. The first time you breathe in, that little evil pool of darkness in the center of the Sergeant's heart stirs and moves; it starts to rise up out of his body, like an ugly cloud of blackness. And as you take more breaths it is sucked up out of his chest, up his throat, and then out of his nostrils. And knowing you would take it on yourself to save him from it, you take all his drunken misery in that little cloud of darkness and you keep breathing, in, and in again, drawing it towards your own face. And then hold it there, just outside your own nostrils." I waited, and watched to see that it was time.

"And now something will happen; it will happen a little quickly, and so you have to concentrate well upon this part. In one breath you will suck the blackness in through your own nose; you will take it upon yourself. The blackness will come down your throat, into your chest, and then slowly—very slowly—it will approach the little red flame of your selfishness: the part of you that would never even imagine taking away someone else's pain, if it meant having it yourself instead.

"And the blackness floats slowly towards the edge of the flame, and then suddenly the black makes contact with the red, and there is a burst of beautiful golden light, like a bolt of lightning shining in the purest gold. And in that moment, because you were willing, in that moment, to swallow all the Sergeant's pain into yourself, the crimson fire of your own selfishness is extinguished, forever. It is gone. And in this explosion too the blackness of the Sergeant's pain is destroyed: destroyed for him, destroyed for you, destroyed forever. For this is the power, the power of the grace of selfless compassion for others.

"And you must know this power, and believe in its power. It is very important that you see, and that you know, that the blackness has been destroyed, in that moment, forever—before you even take your next breath. And then you are only sitting here, with me, silently—and inside of you it is only that golden light, filled everywhere with that golden light."

Taken from Chapter 15 "Free Kindness"
© 2004 by Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally