The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

by Thich Nhat Hanh

We try to avoid suffering, but suffering is useful. We need suffering. Going back to listen and understand our suffering brings about the birth of compassion and love. If we take the time to listen deeply to our own suffering, we will be able to understand it. Any suffering that has not been released and reconciled will continue. Until it has been understood and transformed, we carry with us not just our own suffering but also that of our parents and our ancestors. Getting in touch with the suffering that has been passed down to us helps us understand our own suffering. Understanding suffering gives rise to compassion. Love is born, and right away we suffer less. If we understand the nature and the roots of our suffering, the path leading to the cessation of the suffering will appear in front of us. Knowing there is a way out, a path, brings us relief, and we no longer need to be afraid.

The other person may say things that are full of wrong perceptions, bitterness, accusation, and blaming. If we don’t practice mindfulness, their words will set off irritation, judgment, and anger in us, and we will lose our capacity to listen compassionately. When irritation or anger arises, we lose our capacity to listen. That’s why we have to practice, so that during the whole time of listening, compassion can remain in our hearts. If we can keep our compassion alive, the seeds of anger and judgment in our hearts will not be watered and spring up.

You know that the other person is suffering. When we don’t know how to handle the suffering inside us, we continue to suffer, and we make people around us suffer. When other people don’t know how to handle their suffering, they become its victim. If you imbibe their judgment, fear, and anger, you become its second victim. But if you can listen deeply, understanding that what they are saying is coming from suffering, then you are protected by your compassion.

When someone has caused you a lot of pain, you may not even want to look at or be in the same room as that person, because you will suffer. With awareness, you can understand your own suffering and recognize the suffering in the other person. You may even understand that the reason that person suffers so much is because he or she doesn’t know how to handle the suffering. His suffering spills out, and you are its victim. Maybe he doesn’t want to make you suffer, but he doesn’t know another way. He can’t understand and transform his suffering, and so he makes the people around him suffer too, even when that’s not his intention. Because he suffers, you suffer. He doesn’t need punishment; he needs help.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Man is the sum of all his actions.” The value of our lives depends on the quality of our thinking, our speech, and our action.