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January 22 - July 6, 2022
When we say something that nourishes us and uplifts the people around us, we are feeding love and compassion. When we speak and act in a way that causes tension and anger, we are nourishing violence and suffering.
Even if it’s just a short note, everything you’re writing down can nourish you and the person to whom you are writing.
Many of us suffer because of difficult communication. We feel misunderstood, especially by those we love.
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.
But a lot of our thinking is caught up in dwelling on the past, trying to control the future, generating misperceptions, and worrying about what others are thinking.
That’s why in the Zen tradition they say the paths of talking and of thinking should be cut off. The path of speech is cut off because if you continue to talk, you continue to be caught in your words.
Mindfulness lets us listen to the pain, the sorrow, and the fear inside.
So that we can start healing on our own.
We don’t have to try to get away from our suffering. We don’t have to cover up what is unpleasant in us.
When we stop and sit, we can begin right away to follow our in-breath and out-breath. Immediately, we can enjoy breathing in and breathing out, and everything gets a little bit better because the present moment becomes available to us.
Like at work, even just once per day.
This doesn’t take any fancy technique. Just by sitting and breathing mindfully, you’re bringing your mind home to your body.
Remembering that I have a body and I need to take care of it just as much as my mind.
When you walk mindfully, integrate your breath with each step and focus on your foot connecting with the ground. You’re aware that you’re making a step, and you stop thinking altogether.
If you think while you walk, you’re not really walking.
Can't be meant for all walking ever, like mindful breathing. An exercise to practice regularly.
While you focus your attention on making the step, you are free, because in that time your mind is only with the step you are making. Your mind is no longer carried off into the future or the past. You take one step, and you are free.
Freedom = not thinking?
I guess it's freedom from distractions, specifically. Distractions from the connection between mind and body.
So freedom = connection between mind and body?
It’s probably best to do that only when you are enjoying mindful walking alone;
We don’t tell our fear to go away; we recognize it. We don’t tell our anger to go away; we acknowledge it. These feelings are like a small child tugging at our sleeves. Pick them up and hold them tenderly.
Our ancestors may not have had a chance to get in touch with the practice of mindfulness, which could help them transform their suffering. That is why they have transmitted their unresolved suffering to us.
We consume not because we need to consume but because we’re afraid of encountering the suffering inside us.
Understanding suffering always brings compassion.
Behavior that brings suffering to others comes from suffering.
Understanding that brings compassion.
If we know how to handle suffering, we will know how to handle happiness and produce happiness.
Then our communication with others will be based on the desire to understand rather than the desire to prove ourselves right or make ourselves feel better. We will have only the intention to help.
Bring communication away from a right vs wrong affrontement. Communicate to understand, in order to help the other heal.
And if you’re truly happy, we all profit from your happiness. We need happy people in this world.
It’s helpful to remember at the beginning of every communication with another person that there is a Buddha inside each of us.
“The Buddha” is just a name for the most understanding and compassionate person it’s possible to be.
Even if that person isn’t looking or acting like a Buddha, the capacity for love and compassion is in him or her.
That is what we bow to. Not to what the other person is doing or how they are presenting, but to the Buddha we know exist in them and that we can help grow.
A lotus for you. A Buddha to be.
The lotus flower of your hands is an offering to the person in front of you. When you bow, you recognize the beauty in the other person.
we’re anxious for others to understand us right away. We want to begin by expressing ourselves.
It is okay if you’re not ready to listen at a certain moment. If the quality of your listening is not good enough, it’s better to pause and continue another day;
Deep listening has only one purpose: to help others suffer less.
As long as you are inhabited by the energy of compassion, you are safe.
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.
I can't help other people without knowing how to hep myself first, because knowing to how heal my own suffering will tell me how to help others heal themselves.
How can you love unless you understand? How can the father love his son if he doesn’t understand the suffering and difficulties of his son? How can someone make his beloved happy without knowing anything about that person’s suffering and difficulties?
"Love" as an act toward someone, not as a personnal feeling.
"How can I be loving towards others if I don't understand their suffering".
If you want to make someone happy, you should ask yourself the question “Do I understand him enough?” “Do I understand her enough?”
Loving is trying to make someone happy. How can I make you happy if I don't understand you?
I want to listen to you because I want to love you.”
Compassionate listening isn’t the only thing we can do when someone is suffering, but it’s almost always the first step.
We can train ourselves to speak the truth in such a way that, in the end, the other person can accept it.
Truthful, loving speech is something we need to train ourselves in.
1. 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.
1. We have to speak the language of the world. 2. We may speak differently to different people, in a way that reflects how they think and their ability to receive the teaching. 3. We give the right teaching according to person, time, and place, just as a doctor prescribes the right medicine. 4. We teach in a way that reflects the absolute truth.
To love someone means to be there for him or for her.
But when we’re angry, we aren’t lucid.
If you arrive at your workplace having already practiced mindfulness while getting ready at home and while on your way, you’ll arrive happier and more relaxed than you have in the past, and successful communication will come a lot more easily.
Sometimes workplace communication can seem so difficult, but one mindful breath already begins to make it easier.
When you throw a rock into a river, no matter how small the rock is, it will sink to the bottom of the river. But if you have a boat, you can carry many tons of rocks, and they won’t sink.
“hungry ghost”
Don’t be too eager to help, because when you’re too eager to help, you may have the opposite effect from what you intended, and you may get an opposite response.
when you’re exposed to such behavior from some members of your community, the seed of altruism in you is watered.
Thinking is already action.
