Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.'”

“Tarrou was swinging his leg, tapping the terrace lightly with his heel, as he concluded. After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace. 'Yes,' he replied. 'The path of sympathy.'”

“'I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it's a fact one doesn't come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That's why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victims' side so as to reduce the damage done. Amongst them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category; in other words, to peace.'”

“When a difficulty arises in our relationships and one of us feels resentment or hurt, a good practice to try is called "beginning anew." To begin anew is to look deeply and honestly at ourselves—our past actions, speech, and thoughts and to create a fresh beginning within ourselves and in our relationships with others.”

“Our wounded child is not only us; he or she may represent several generations of ancestors. Our parents and ancestors may have suffered all their lives without knowing how to look after the wounded child in themselves, so they transmitted that child to us. So when we're embracing the wounded child inside us, we're embracing all the wounded children of past generations.”

“Every one of us has a wounded child within who needs our care and love. But we run away from our inner child because we're afraid of the suffering. In addition to listening to others with compassion, we must also listen to the wounded child inside us.”

“When you produce a thought, it bears your signature. It's you who produced that thought, and you are responsible for it. If it's a thought of compassion, forgiveness, non-discrimination, you will continue beautifully, because you are there in it. You are the author of that action. Your speech and your physical actions, both compassionate and violent, also bear your signature.”

“We want to offer the best kind of thinking, the best kind of speech, and the best kind of bodily acts, because those actions are our continuation. When we think, when we speak, when we act, we create, and we are there in our creations. That is the outcome of our being. Our communications will not be lost when our physical bodies are no longer here.”

“Everything we say and do bears our signature. We can't say, "That's not my thought." We're responsible for our own communication. So if it happens that yesterday I said something that wasn't right, I have to do something today to transform it. 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.”

“When you write words full of compassion and forgiveness, you feel freer, ... Even before you mail the letter or send the e-mail or text, you feel better. The person reading your words will also feel your compassion. In the same way, if you speak with anger and violence, if you speak out of a desire to punish, both you and the people who hear your words experience more suffering.”

“a thought that is full of judgment and anger, that thought will immediately poison your body and mind and the people around you.”

“So thinking is already acting. You don't need to say or do anything in order to be acting. To produce a thought is to act. When you produce a thought that is full of understanding, forgiveness, and compassion, that thought will immediately have a healing effect on both your physical and mental health and on those around you.”

“Thinking is already action...it is...powerful energy. Thinking can push you to do or say things that are destructive, or it can create a lot of love. Every thought will bring a fruit, sometimes right away, sometimes later on. When you produce a thought of hate, anger, or despair, that thought is a poison which will affect your body and your mind. A thought of hatred or anger can lead one person to hurt another.”

“Our communication is what we put out into the world and what remains after we have left it. In this way, our communication is our karma. The Sanskrit word karma means "action," and it refers not just to bodily action but to what we express with our bodies, our words, and our thoughts and intentions.”

“Every human and every animal communicates. We typically think of communication as the words we use when we speak or write, but our body language, our facial expressions, our tone of voice, our physical actions, and even our thoughts are ways of communicating.”

“In the process of community building we get the transformation and healing we need to further the transformation and healing of the world. This is a process of training and learning. 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.”

“We need to find better ways to communicate. If we can do this in our relationships, we can do it in our work environments, and even in our political environments. We have to transform our governments into mindful, compassionate places of deep listening and loving speech. We each can do our part to contribute as a citizen, as a member of the human family.”

“Living in the world, we have strong habits. We walk without any awareness or enjoyment of our steps. We walk as if we have to run. We speak but don't know what we are saying; we create a lot of suffering while speaking. Communities that commit themselves to mindfulness can help members of the community learn how to speak, breathe, and walk mindfully. The community helps train you, and you train yourself.”

“ ‘But why don't you stop my going? You could easily manage it.'.. It was none of his business, he said. Rambert had elected for happiness, and he, Rieux, had no argument to put up against him. ... 'If that's so, why tell me to hurry up?' It was Rieux who now smiled. 'Perhaps because I, too, would like to do my bit for happiness.' ”

“When we sit and concentrate as a community, we create a collective energy that has compassion and awakened understanding in it. Sitting together in silence can be a practice of listening to our own suffering and the suffering of the world. The collective energy of mindfulness also supports our individual practice. When we see other people who are in good communication with themselves and others, they inspire us.”

“Without mindfulness, technology can be more destructive than constructive. When we speak about creating a sustainable environment or a more just society, we usually speak of physical action or technological advances as the means to achieve these goals. But we forget about the element of a connected community. Without that, we can't do anything at all.”

“We can speak of our practice in terms of energy because mindfulness is a kind of energy. When we bring our energies together, they are increased a thousandfold. The whole can be much, much greater than the sum of its parts. Systematic change can't be achieved without the energy of community. If you want to save the planet, if you want to transform society, you need a strong community. Technology is not enough.”

“A community that is committed to mindful speech and deep listening can be very effective in making society better. These two practices could be part of a global ethic that would be available to people of any culture or religious tradition to reduce conflict and restore communication.”

“As powerful as compassionate communication can be when we use it in our individual relationships, its power is magnified when we bring it to our communities. Both communication and community have the same Latin root, communicare, meaning to impart, share, or make common. We need to go in the direction of reconciliation and understanding, not just with our friends and family, but in our neighborhoods and workplaces.”

“Our fellow citizens had fallen into line, adapted themselves, as people say, to the situation, because there was no way of doing otherwise. Naturally they retained the attitudes of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel their sting. Indeed to some, Dr Rieux amongst them, this precisely was the most disheartening thing; that the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

“Our sorrow, fear, worries, and pain are like rocks that can be carried by the boat of mindfulness. If we give ourselves the time and space to embrace and recognize the suffering, we won't sink into the ocean of anger, worries, or sorrow. We become lighter.”

“But none of us needs to embrace pain and sorrow alone. 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. The same is true of our suffering.”

“The first thing is to look deeply and see that not only on your side but also on the other side there's a lot of fear and suffering. In the beginning we think that we are the only ones who suffer and have a lot of fear. But if we get close enough to the other side and look, we see that they also have a lot of fear—fear of us—and also suffering.”

“We practiced mindful breathing and offered the collective energy of peace and mindfulness so they could practice listening with compassion. Our presence with the two groups was very important. We created a collective energy that supported mindful speech.”

“When one group listens deeply to the other group, they recognize, maybe for the first time, that the other side has suffered very much, and that the suffering of the other group is very much like their own suffering, even if the circumstances are different. For many it's the first time that they recognize people on the other side as human beings just like them, who have suffered just like them.”