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January 11 - January 31, 2024
when you listen to someone, you should be careful not to allow the toxins to ruin your health and bring suffering to you and to the other person or group of people.
If we’re overloaded with fear, anger, regret, or anxiety, we’re not free, no matter what position we hold in society or how much money we have.
We spend many hours every day forgetting we have bodies. But if we begin to practice breathing mindfully and listening to the body, we can also begin to look deeply and see that the earth is all around us. We touch the earth, and we are no longer alienated from our own bodies or from the body of the earth.
if you’re truly happy, we all profit from your happiness. We need happy people in this world.
When we listen to someone with the intention of helping that person suffer less, this is deep listening. When we listen with compassion, we don’t get caught in judgment.
After we have deeply listened and allowed the other person to express everything in his heart, we’ll have a chance later on to give him a little of the information he needs to correct his perception—but not now. Now we just listen, even if the person says things that are wrong. It’s the practice of mindfulness of compassion that keeps us listening deeply.
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. You only want to help them suffer less. You don’t blame or judge them anymore.
The words we say are nourishment. We can use words that will nourish ourselves and nourish another person. What you say, what you write, should convey only compassion and understanding. Your words can inspire confidence and openness in another person. Generosity can be practiced wonderfully with loving speech. You don’t have to spend any money to practice generosity. In Buddhism another way of saying loving speech is Right Speech. In our daily life, Right Speech is what nourishes us and nourishes those around us.
Tell the truth. Don’t lie or turn the truth upside down. 2. Don’t exaggerate. 3. Be consistent. This means no double-talk: speaking about something in one way to one person and in an opposite way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons. 4. Use peaceful language. Don’t use insulting or violent words, cruel speech, verbal abuse, or condemnation.
It’s important to remember that what you think is the truth could be your own incomplete or erroneous perception. You think it’s the truth, but your perception may be partial; it may be blocked by something.
There are many ways to tell the truth. It’s an art.
We have to find the best way to tell the truth so that the other person can receive it easily. Sometimes even the most skillful words can cause pain. That is okay. Pain can heal.
It takes a lot of practice to tell the truth in a way that the other person can hear.
To those with more profound understanding, you have to give a deeper answer, reflecting that nothing is permanent and everything is constantly changing.
When you have attachment, craving, or despair, remember that you are your own teacher. You can listen to these strong emotions and communicate back the healing you need.
Even with adults, we can vary what we say depending on how fragile we think they might be about a certain subject. We want to share information in a way that people can integrate and use later, even if not right away. This isn’t lying; it’s telling the truth in a skillful way.
My mind goes home to my body, and I become aware that I have a body. That is a practice of love, directed to yourself. If you are capable of being with yourself, you are capable of being with the person you love.
It’s the people we care most about who trigger our greatest suffering. We may spend a long time living with the rift, until we start to think of it as irreparable.
Even if it takes a long time, you will feel better when you are master of yourself and you are doing your best.
When we’re able to produce a compassionate thought, this thought begins to heal us, heal the other, and heal the world.
If you want to send an e-mail or call someone on the phone, you might want to recite the following verse to yourself before you begin to type or to dial the number: Words can travel thousands of miles. May my words create mutual understanding and love. May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.
When you speak, allow the insight of our collective humanity to speak through you. When you walk, don’t walk for yourself alone; walk for your ancestors and your community. When you breathe, allow the larger world to breathe for you. When you’re angry, allow your anger to be released and to be embraced by the larger community. If you know how to do this for one day, you are already transformed. Be your community and let your community be you. This is true practice.
Every time we communicate, we either produce more compassion, love, and harmony or we produce more suffering and violence.
Thinking is the first kind of action, because our thinking is the basis for how we affect the world.
When I drink my tea, I just drink my tea. I don’t have to think. I can stop all my thinking while I drink my tea. When I stop my thinking, I can focus my attention on the tea. There is only the tea. There is only me. Between me and the tea there is a connection.
