In the springtime, thousands of different kinds of flowers bloom. Your heart can also bloom. You can let your heart open up to the world. Love is possible—do not be afraid of it. Love is indispensable to life, and if in the past you have suffered because of love, you can learn how to love again.

The practice of mindfulness will help you to love properly, in such a way that harmony, freedom, and joy are possible. The true declaration of love is, “Dear one, I am here for you,” because the most precious gift you can give to your loved one is your true presence, with body and mind united in solidity and freedom.

You also have to learn how to speak all over again. When you speak with 100 percent of your being, your speech becomes a mantra. In Buddhism, a mantra is a sacred formula that has the power to transform reality. You don’t need to practice mantras in some foreign language like Sanskrit or Tibetan. You can practice in your own beautiful language: for if your body and mind are unified in mindfulness, then whatever you say becomes a mantra.

After you have practiced walking meditation or mindfulness of the breath for two or three minutes, you are here, really alive, truly present. You look at the person you love with a smile, and you say the first mantra: “Dear one, I am here for you.” You know that if you are here, then your beloved is here also. Life, with all its miracles, is here, and among those miracles is the person before you, the one you love.

You can say this mantra a few times a day: “Dear one, I am here for you.” And now that you have the ability to recognize the presence of this other person, you can practice a second mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are here, alive, and that makes me very happy.” This mantra enables you to recognize the presence of the other person as something very precious, a miracle. It is the mantra of deep appreciation for his or her presence.

When people feel appreciated in this way—when they feel embraced by the mindful attention of another—then they will open and blossom like a flower. There is no doubt that you can make this happen through the energy of mindfulness. You can do it right away, even today, and you will see that the transformation it brings about is instantaneous. In order to love, we must be here, and then our presence will embrace the presence of the other person. Only then will they have the feeling of being loved. So you must recognize the presence of the other person with the energy of mindfulness, with the genuine presence of your body and mind in oneness.

If the person you love is suffering, you can say a third mantra: “Dear one, I know that you are suffering. That’s why I am here for you.” You are here, and you recognize the fact that your loved one is suffering. You don’t need to make a big deal about it; you just generate your own presence and say this mantra. That’s all. “Dear one, I know that you are suffering. That’s why I am here for you.” This is the essence of love—to be there for the one you love when she is suffering.

A mantra can be expressed not only through speech but by the mind and body as a whole. The fact that you are there with the energy of your presence and understanding, and the fact that you recognize the presence of the other person and their suffering, will give them a great deal of relief. Some people suffer deeply but are completely ignored by others. They are alone and isolated, so cut off from the rest of the world that their suffering becomes overwhelming. You must go to them and open the door to their heart so they can see the love that is there.

Our bodies and minds are sustained by the cosmos. The clouds in the sky nourish us; the light of the sun nourishes us. The cosmos offers us vitality and love in every moment. Despite this fact, some people feel isolated and alienated from the world. As a bodhisattva, you can approach such a person, and with the miracle of the mantra you can open the door of his or her heart to the world and to the love that is always happening. “Dear one, I know that you are suffering a lot. I know this, and I am here for you, just as the trees are here for you and the flowers are here for you.” The suffering is there, but something else is also there: the miracle of life. With this mantra, you will help them to realize this and open the door of their closed heart.

The fourth mantra is a bit more difficult to practice, but I will transmit it to you because one day you will need it. It is: “Dear one, I am suffering. I need your help.” This fourth mantra is more difficult to practice because of the negative habit energy we call pride. When your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most in the world, the pain is very great. If someone else had said or done the same thing to you, you would suffer much less. But if the person who did it is the one who is dearest to you in the world, the suffering is really dreadful. You want to lock yourself away in a room and cry alone.

Now, when this person notices that something is wrong and tries to approach you about it, you might rebuff him or her. “Leave me alone,” you say. “I don’t need you.” The other might say, “Dear one, it seems to me that you are suffering,” but you do everything possible to prove you don’t need them.

This is exactly the opposite of what you should do. You should practice mindfulness of the breath with your body and mind in union, and with this total presence, go to the other person and say the mantra: “Dear one, I am suffering. I need your help. I need you to explain to me why you did this thing to me.”

If you are a real practitioner, please use this fourth mantra when you are in such a situation. You must not let pride come between you and your loved one. Many people suffer because of this obstacle called pride. You love someone, you need them, and so in these difficult moments, you should go and ask them for help.

In true love, there is no place for pride. I beg you to remember this. You share happiness and adversity with this person, so you must go to him or her and share the truth about your suffering. “Dear one, I am suffering too much. I want you to help me. Explain to me why you said that to me.”

When you do that, the Buddha does it at the same time with you, because the Buddha is in you. All of us practice this mantra along with you—you have the support of the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha in uttering these words. These words will quickly transform the situation, so do not let things drag on for months or years. You should act decisively; the magic formulas have been transmitted to you for this purpose. Inscribe these four mantras in your heart, and use them. This is the practice of love, and its foundation is the energy of mindfulness.

⧫

From You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh. English translation © 2009 by Shambhala Publications, Inc. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.

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In her first book, How to Do Nothing, artist Jenny Odell examined the power of quiet contemplation in a world where our attention is bought and sold. Now, she takes up the question of how to find space for silence when we feel like we don’t have enough time to spend.

In her new book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, Odell traces the history behind our relationship to time, from the day-to-day pressures of productivity to the deeper existential dread underlying the climate crisis. In the process, she explores alternative ways of experiencing time that can help us get past the illusion of the separate self and instead open us to wonder and freedom.

In a recent episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sat down with Odell to discuss the social dimensions of time, how paying attention can unsettle the boundaries between us, why she views burnout as a spiritual issue, and how love can bring us out of linear time. Read an excerpt from their conversation, and then listen to the full episode.

James Shaheen (JS): These days, it can be so easy to fall into apocalyptic thinking and what you call declinism, which you describe as the belief that a once stable society is headed for inevitable and irreversible doom. Can you walk us through some of the dangers of this view?

Jenny Odell (JO): I think declinism can foreclose a really crucial space of questioning or imagination that would allow you to imagine other pathways forward. It may be the case that that space is vanishingly small, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still very important. Rebecca Solnit has written really beautifully about this: what you believe very literally affects what it is possible for you to do. You see this individually in people where what they think they’re capable of doing affects what they’re able to do, but I think it’s also true collectively. So I worry a lot about not only giving up before it’s over but also how the world looks to someone who’s given up. 

Declinism goes hand in hand with the idea that things used to be better—and a lot of things did used to be better. But a blanket notion that things were stable for a long time and now we’re going over the edge is a myopic view in both directions. I’m much more interested in a notion of history where every moment is actually contingent and at every moment things could have gone different ways. If you look at history that way, the present moment appears very different—it looks like it could also go a lot of different ways.

Sharon Salzberg (SS): You also discuss the phenomenon of climate grief, and you suggest that grief can be incredibly useful as it can teach us new forms of subjecthood. Can you say more about the types of subjecthood that grief makes possible?

JO: Climate grief is so much grief for something—or for someone or someones. I think in that acknowledgment is this recognition that you don’t really belong to yourself. In How to Do Nothing, I describe going to Elkhorn Slough and seeing all of these birds. At that moment, there was such a profusion of them and they were so beautiful, but I also couldn’t see them not against the backdrop of loss.

In that moment, I realized that it doesn’t really logically make sense to love anything. From the point of total utilitarian logic, why would you tie your fate to something that is endangered? And yet that is the moment when you experience your deepest sense of humanity. The experience of grief itself is that I care about something so much that it’s disassembling my ego. It’s almost like the center of gravity is between you and the being that you’re grieving for.

JS: Moments like the one you just described seem to unsettle the boundaries between us. So what have these experiences taught you about what you call the illusion of the bounded self?

JO: What the self is is still a very active question for me, and it’s only become more fascinatingly complicated for me through experiences like that. I am someone who has thought a lot about context for a long time. A lot of my art asked the question about how you can separate an individual thing from its context. I was an artist in residence at a dump, and I researched 200 objects, everything I could find about them, and the conclusion that I came to was that this object you’re holding in your hand is the crystallization of economic patterns: people thought they wanted this, or people thought they could get people to want this, or these materials were available and cheap at this time. You have this thing that seems like it’s just given, but actually all of these factors fed into it. So I’ve always been interested in that in all domains.

The same is true for the self. I do feel like I have some sort of core vaguely, but I do also feel like there’s Mountain Jenny, and then there’s Oakland Jenny, and there’s Paralyzed by a Butterfly Jenny, and I’m very different around different people. I think someone could come to the conclusion that there just is no self and it’s all totally meaningless, but I don’t really think that. Instead, I have a very ecological view of the self, like it’s something that’s alive. It’s entirely made out of relationships.

SS: Along those lines, in contrast to the notion of an isolated individual, you write that you’ve come to define being alive as an embrace. What does it mean that being alive is like an embrace?

JO: I think of it as a mix of sensitivity and love. I feel alive to the extent that I can see the birds [around me]—and not just see them but also feel moved by them. I think that is the kind of engine behind wanting to see what the next day brings and also wanting to see how I change in response to those things. My nightmare is feeling like I’m just an isolated unit that’s just incidentally here on earth without having any relationship to anything.

I’m very fortunate to have been able to mostly live in the same place my whole life, and the relationship that I have to this place is so, so meaningful. It’s so much a part of who I am. Someone recently said to me, “I don’t just think that we see places. I think that places see us.” That’s what I mean by the embrace: I want to feel like I’m sensitive to things that are happening around me, but I also want to feel seen—there’s a reciprocal relationship where I’m looking at a world that’s also alive.

SS: You quote the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, who writes that when we are actually seeing, we’re in a state of love and there’s no yesterday and no tomorrow. Can you say more about this state of love?

JO: One of the reasons love feels related to time for me is that there’s nothing instrumental about love, and there’s so much right now that feels instrumental. In How to Do Nothing, I talked about Martin Buber’s idea of I-Thou versus I-It relationships. Having an I-Thou relationship to something is much closer to what I was saying earlier about the center of gravity, and I-It is more like things exist in the world for me to either use them or discard them.

Anyone who’s experienced even one second of love toward anything or anyone knows that the notion of gain or strategy just doesn’t make any sense. It is the ultimate end in and of itself. If you’re there, you just want to be there. I have the linear timeline of my life, but I also know that in these moments that I’ve had where I felt a feeling of love, it felt like time stopped. I don’t really think of myself as having an age in those moments. They’re very strikingly similar, and I suspect they will continue to be similar.

♦

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When someone asked the Buddha what the essence of his teachings were, he responded that he only ever taught about suffering and the end of suffering. Summarized as the four noble truths, his teachings say that we create our own distress because of our endless wants. But we can just as well choose not to create that suffering by following the noble eightfold path, which includes eight areas of study and practice that cover all aspects of our lives. They are: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Here, “right” doesn’t oppose wrong in a moral sense but refers to what is right or correct or proper (Pali: samma) to ensure the end of our suffering.

Both the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path are familiar to anyone who’s spent even a short period of time studying Buddhism. But there’s another thread that runs through all four truths and, particularly, the eight factors of the path. It’s what we could call the ninth implicit factor: right relationship.

All of us are in constant relationship with others: our parents, children, lovers, friends, coworkers. Even when we’re alone, we’re in relationship with ourselves, with beings more than human, with objects of all kinds, and with the Earth, and depending on our level of awareness, we’ll relate with more or less skill, either birthing or ending suffering. Practicing right relationship can help us increase both our skill and awareness so that we can establish loving, fulfilling relationships based on kindness, clarity, and care. 

We can define right relationship as the recognition of our interdependence or, as Thich Nhat Hanh called it, our “interbeing.” If we look closely at our lives, we’ll recognize that none of us can be ourselves by ourselves. None of us are—we, by necessity, inter-are. Every aspect of who I am—my hair color, the shape of my eyes, my love of chocolate chip cookies, my dislike of coconut, my interest in Buddhism, my passion for words, my dislike of crowds—every little detail that makes up who I am has been shaped by something or someone in my life, and it’s still being shaped, constantly. I am a continuous process of becoming, and so are you as well as everything around us. No one thing or being exists in isolation, just as no action stands on its own. The question isn’t whether we affect one another—we do. The question is how.

If we start with the premise that all eight factors of the path occur within relationship, then we can investigate how right relationship operates within each one. Applying the lens of right relationship can inform and enrich our practice of the other eight factors, beginning with right view, which the Buddha called “the precursor of the path.”

The traditional definition of right view is knowledge of the four noble truths, which helps us to first identify the problem of suffering, and second, to apply a solution. More broadly, we can think of right view as correct seeing—that is, seeing things as they are, not as we are. 

Some time ago, a good friend was fired from her job at a special events company after she made a mistake in one of her projects. She’d been scheduled to run the operations for a big conference in another country months after the time she was fired. Her partner had also signed up for this event. When she was let go, my friend was told someone else would be running the event, and for reasons relating to the company’s policies, that she wouldn’t be able to attend that event even as a participant. She’d worked for this company for more than ten years and had become close with both her coworkers and her clients, so she was very upset by the sudden loss of work she loved, as well as the potential severing of professional relationships. The decision seemed extreme and unfair to her, and she was so unsettled that she didn’t know how to move forward. 

Her friends rallied around her, assuring her that they too found the company’s response overly harsh. This helped to soften the blow a little, as did her spontaneous decision to book a vacation with her partner. Instead of staying home moping about the conference she’d miss, she and her partner could spend some time together, and she could use those few days to process and consider her next steps. Except her partner didn’t respond the way she expected. He was a bit aloof when she voiced her distress about losing her work and community, and after a few days’ reflection, let her know that he would still attend the conference. When my friend asked why, all he said was, “I planned on it.” Not understanding why he’d put his plans before hers, my friend was doubly upset. She felt unseen and unsupported—as if they were no longer in a relationship, she said—which made her feel yet another loss.

When she told me the story, it occurred to me that they were both having a hard time understanding one another, and more importantly, feeling what the other felt. Instead of seeing the situation in its entirety and with all its complexity, they were each seeing it through the filter of their own view. But if they could apply right relationship to right view, would they see the situation differently?

Let’s say that instead of proceeding from what he knew or thought he knew, my friend’s partner approached the situation with a question—something along the lines of: “it seems that it’s important to you that I cancel the conference; can you tell me more about why that is so I can better understand you?” A question like this would create an opening. It would immediately foreground their connection to one another and allow my friend to state her view. It would also make her feel that her partner was interested in her experience, that he was seeing her. He could then apply the same attitude of curiosity to his own view to tell her why it was important for him to honor his original commitment. Perhaps, to show his support in some other way, he could suggest that she go on vacation with a close friend—and maybe even offer to pay for it. Or maybe, after listening to her, he’d decide that it was more important to help her get through this challenging time and attend a similar conference in the future. 

For her part, my friend could create space between her partner’s response and her hurt by asking why he thought it was important to attend the conference instead of accompanying her at a time when she felt alone and discouraged. Doing so after stating her needs would help her better understand his motivation (beyond his first superficial and perhaps defensive response). She could then decide perhaps that his answer had nothing to do with her but with his prior commitment, and instead plan their vacation to start after his return. 

So much of our conflict comes from our misunderstandings or assumptions. Like the blind men in the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant, we assume we know based on a limited amount of information. A king brings an elephant before six blind men and asks them to describe the animal after touching only one part of its body. One of the men feels its head and concludes that an elephant is like a jar. Another touches its ear and says it’s unequivocally like a winnowing basket. A third runs his hand over its tusk and says it’s like a plowshare, and so on. Having a limited view, the blind men come to the wrong conclusion, confusing a slice of reality for the whole.

Right relationship applied to right view would remind my friend and her partner that there are two people involved in the situation, each with slightly or very different views, and that they affect one another. By taking right relationship as the basis for their dialogue, they might feel more connected, more in tune with their own and the other’s wishes, and more respectful of them. Through this process, they can then make their choices from within their relationship—even if in the end they agree to disagree.

The Buddha said that right view is like sugarcane, a grape seed, or a grain of rice that, when planted in moist soil, grows sweet and delightful, agreeable and pleasing. Right relationship is that moist soil from which right view draws its sustenance. It’s the rich ground that nurtures our view of things as they are so we can enjoy the fruits of our actions and our connections to one another, both in this moment and for many years to come.

♦

Excerpted from a book in progress called LOVE: The Practice of Right Relationship.

The post Right Relationship: The Ninth Factor of the Path appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Early in the summer of 1971, I was living at Tassajara, San Francisco Zen Center’s mountain training center near Big Sur. Suzuki Roshi came for several weeks in May and June; I was his attendant and saw him every day. At that time his health seemed good. But by late summer, when he was back in San Francisco, Suzuki had become ill. His doctor at first thought it was hepatitis. The doctor told his wife to cook chicken livers to help him keep up his strength, so she did, sauteing them in soy sauce. Suzuki didn’t like them, but he dutifully ate them.

I was still at Tassajara. Knowing that my teacher was ill, I felt sad and forlorn, and I missed him. I went about my work in a daze. Even though that September I was due to be ordained by Suzuki as a priest, for the moment he was far away and I hungered for any news that he might be getting better and for the time when I might see him again, hopefully recovered.

Near the wood shop where I worked there was the stump of what once had been a majestic olive tree. It had been cut down many years before, but now new branches were growing out of the stump, each about four or five feet long. For some reason my attention kept being drawn to that tree. Then one day I had a vision of the tree trunk as Suzuki, and the branches as us, his students. Somehow seeing the tree that way lifted my spirits. I cut off one of the branches and over the next few days, using hand tools and sandpaper, shaped it into a walking stick of a length that I thought would be right for Suzuki. 

That fall I returned to the City Center, and saw for myself how ill and weak Suzuki was. His skin had taken on a deep yellowish cast, his face was wan, and he was thinner than I had ever seen him. I waited for an opportunity to give Suzuki my newly carved cane. My room was just down the hall from his apartment, so when I saw him walking in the hallway, I quickly got the cane and offered it to him.

Suzuki quietly took the cane, thanked me politely, and walked back into his apartment. I felt a little disappointed. Making that cane was important to me, and I suppose I wanted him to acknowledge that. But that was just me, lost in my sadness. He had more important things to think about, as we would all soon discover.

A couple of days later I saw him in the hallway again, but he was not using the cane. To be honest, I don’t think he really needed a cane, and I had probably made it too short for him anyway. Nevertheless, he looked at me and I looked at him. Nothing else happened.

However, the next day I saw him tapping along using the cane to support himself. I felt better. I had done what little I could. I was just a young man grieving what increasingly seemed to be a dire illness, and he was a much older man who had seen everything. That was the ground where we met, and the cane was our connection.

When he did not seem to be getting better, his doctor had him go to the hospital for some tests. He spent the night in the hospital. His close disciple Yvonne [Rand] visited him there the next day and told me later what transpired.

When the doctor came into his hospital room to tell Suzuki the results, Suzuki took one look at the doctor and said, “I am a religious person. Tell me the truth.” 

The doctor told him that he had liver cancer, and that he did not have long to live. According to Yvonne, Suzuki took the news without flinching. I think he already knew. Earlier that summer he had dropped hints in his lectures that he might not be with us for too much longer. “Sometimes when something is dying,” he said then, “it is the greatest teacher.”

Shortly after, in a hastily called meeting, Suzuki invited those of his ordained disciples that were in the City Center to come to his bedroom for an important announcement. We were a group of about ten people, all wearing our priests’ robes due to the importance of the occasion. Having just been ordained, I was still getting used to my new robes and felt awkward in them. I had never been in Suzuki’s bedroom before. As we crowded around his bed, waiting to hear what he would say, it felt strange for me to be there in his private space, but also comforting. I could tell from the expression on Mrs. Suzuki’s face as she let us in the room that the news would not be good.

Sitting on his bed in his underrobe, he calmly told us the news. A small cassette tape recorder on the bed recorded what he said so it could be sent to those disciples who could not make the meeting. “I asked the doctor,” Suzuki said, raising his voice a bit so the recorder could pick it up, “if I could have two years more. Is it possible? The doctor said, ‘Two years at most.’”

For a moment that seemed like a shred of good news. But as we found out soon enough, it was not to be. He was dead in three months.

I was in shock. I knew he was ill, but I hadn’t expected this. Time stopped for me. There was some brief discussion after his announcement, but there wasn’t much to say. Each of us was quiet, alone with our own surprise and sadness. As everyone filed out, I was reluctant to go. I turned back and awkwardly bowed to Suzuki. He looked up at me and saw, I suppose, a young man who loved him and who had just had his guts kicked in.

 “Hi,” he said in a friendly way. That was all. “Hi.”

Some days later, each of the ordained disciples was given a chance to see Suzuki privately one last time. As soon as I entered his bedroom I could see that he was already much weaker. He lay on his back in bed and seemed to be sleeping, but hearing me enter he opened his eyes, smiled and said, “Oh, Chikudo-san.” That was the first (and last) time he addressed me by my ordained name. We made small talk about my new priest robes for a minute or two.

As we spoke I struggled to find words. I wanted to ask him so much: what I should do, where I should go, how I should find my way when he was gone, but it was all too big for words. Finally, speaking in metaphor, I referred to the new temple bell that had just arrived at our center, which I knew he could hear from his room, and said, “We have a new bell here now, but we don’t know how to hit it yet.” In this way I tried to express my grief and confusion, a newly minted priest who was losing his teacher, and who didn’t know what to do.

Whether he couldn’t make sense of what I was trying to say, or simply had no more energy to speak, he just closed his eyes and turned away from me. Or perhaps he was indicating, without saying so, that those questions were for me to answer now, not him.

In any case, it was time to go.

After Suzuki died, his wife gave the cane I had made for him to Chogyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who had been close to Suzuki. I’m told by people close to Trungpa that he kept that cane on his altar next to a photo of Suzuki for the rest of his life. I only met Trungpa once, when he came to visit our center to pay his respects after Suzuki had died, but it seems that I had remained connected to him for much longer through that cane. Objects sometimes take on a life of their own. 

This article is an excerpt from the author’s forthcoming book, The Wisdom of Suzuki Roshi: Personal Stories, Teachings, and Reflections. 

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“What’s the best way to work with difficult people?” 

This is one of the most common questions I hear while leading mindful leadership trainings inside of companies or during public leadership workshops. Whenever I’m asked this question, I become curious. Very curious.

I like to make eye contact with the person asking the question to try to see if the person is aware that they, too, are at times one of those “difficult people.” The question itself can be a subtle form of taking on the role of a victim, since it implies that the person might be blind to how they themselves can be negatively perceived by others. By labeling certain people or behaviors as “difficult,” the question is making a judgment, and it echoes our “inner Homer” tendency to not want to be held accountable for our own role in “difficult” relationships.

Sometimes I even ask the person directly, “Are you, at times, one of those difficult people?”

An important and fundamental distinction to make is between “difficult people” and behaviors or actions that we find difficult. This particular pattern, of labeling difficult behavior as a kind of “character flaw,” is so pervasive that it has a name: attribution error. This refers to how, when someone does something that hurts or angers us, we tend to judge that person’s entire character. They become, in our minds, that label. And once we label them a “difficult person,” all their actions fit under that umbrella. I suppose, from an evolutionary perspective, this is an effective process of protecting ourselves and defending our tribe from those “others” who pose a threat—that is, those with specific unwanted “character flaws.”

An important and fundamental distinction to make is between “difficult people” and behaviors or actions that we find difficult.

A strange and rather pervasive human behavior pattern is that we tend to judge others by the impact their actions have on us. We judge ourselves by our intentions. 

This process—from feeling the impact of another person’s behavior on us to drawing conclusions and assigning labels—happens quickly, often outside our conscious thinking or choice. Not only does it apply to individuals, attribution error can quickly and easily expand to much larger groups. Within companies, sales groups can form judgments about the operations team; customer service groups can judge marketing teams. Staff employees can judge leadership teams, and leaders can judge staff. In our wider world, we label someone who changes lanes without signaling a “bad driver,” someone who arrives late to the office a “lazy employee,” someone who cuts in line at the store a “rude person,” and so on.

For a variety of reasons, people can label whole categories of “others” —white people and Black people, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Muslims—as angry, ungrateful, stupid, untrustworthy, dangerous, and on and on, all based on profoundly powerful attribution errors.

Often the process begins with an underlying belief or judgment that we’ve heard from those we work with or grew up with. At times it begins with feeling hurt, uneasy, or threatened—a simple “ouch.” Someone says something or does something and we respond by feeling hurt, angry, put down, or not seen. This reaction can arise with how someone looks at us.

The practice of finding more clarity within ourselves and employing compassionate accountability begins with becoming more curious about these reactions and why they have arisen. Skillfully engaging in the practice “be curious, not furious” means to feel and act with a sense of greater safety, instead of scanning for threats. It means to feel more satisfied instead of focusing on what is lacking or needed. It means to feel and act with a greater sense of connection, not disconnection. It also means developing effective strategies for working more skillfully with strong emotions.

♦ 

Excerpted from the book Finding Clarity: How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces, and Meaningful Lives ©2023 by Marc Lesser. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

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Martine Batchelor: Something that is important to explore, look at, and be careful with in terms of the dharma of relationships is ending a relationship intentionally. In the dharma, we talk a lot about patience, generosity, compassion, and forgiveness. But, as the Buddha says, we need to have as much compassion for ourselves as for others. So in a relationship, we need to care for and protect ourselves. 

Long ago, I was teaching about compassion, and this young woman came to me and said, “I’m not sure if I am compassionate enough.” She explained that she had a husband who was a drug addict, which was not really the problem, but his dealer was coming to threaten the family. After three years of this, she finally left him. When she asked me, “Do you think I was compassionate enough?” I nearly said, “You were too compassionate.” I told her, “You were really compassionate enough, and it was a good idea to leave him for your own safety.” 

We’ve talked about the parami of courage, the parami of courage of saying no, the parami of courage of saying “Yes, I love you, but from afar.” If we are harmed in a relationship, then we have to save ourselves. We have to be able to end a relationship knowing that life is complex, life is rich, and it does not depend on having that harmful person in my life. There are other people out there who will be supportive and beneficial to me. We have to have the courage to protect ourselves, to take care of ourselves in relationships.

Laura Bridgman: That’s true. And even if a relationship or situation isn’t overtly harmful, it could be that the relationship isn’t really serving our growth and development, whether that’s in our life or our practice. That can be a more subtle, nuanced sense that I need to separate, I need to go in another direction here. I found it helpful to discern what’s driving my desire to move away or to stay. I liked what you were saying about the parami, for instance. We may sometimes feel that we should be generous or compassionate. We may assume that compassion or generosity is one thing, and saying no and having a boundary is another. They can actually go together. There can be a compassionate way of saying no. Saying no can actually be a generous gesture in the sense of not continuing with an unworkable relationship or situation. 

When we look at our relationship with these qualities, we don’t need to take a fixed position on them. “I should be compassionate, I should be open,” I don’t think that’s what the Buddha meant. It’s more like a process of balance. If my heart is closed, how come? What’s keeping it closed? That’s a generous attitude. And if my heart is stuck open and I’m not able to hold my boundaries, what do I need here? What would support me to feel where my line is in this relationship?

Martine Batchelor: I have observed that when a relationship is very good, you don’t question it. If the relationship is very bad, then hopefully, you get out of it. But the most difficult thing about ending a relationship is when you are in the middle: one day is good, I stay; one day is bad, I go. Up and down. That is a difficult place to be, and so one needs to bring wisdom and protection to that. 

There was another story that struck me. I once had a lady come and again ask, “Am I compassionate enough?” She explains, “We have many children in this family, but I am the only one who still sees my father. But I only see him once a year.” Your first reaction may be, “Wait a minute, once a year? That’s not very compassionate.” But she was the only one who was able to even do that. And why? Because what he wanted once a year, at least, was to be taken to a restaurant and he would be so cantankerous, shouting at everybody. The experience was a disaster. That’s why nobody else wanted to meet him. I told her, “That’s very courageous of you and compassionate to do it once a year. Because that’s what you’re able to do. But you cannot do more. And that’s wisdom: to know what my limits are in that situation.”

Laura Bridgman: This makes me think of practicing with doubt. For instance: Should I stay? Should I go? We get pulled between these different viewpoints of all the things that justify staying and all the things that justify going. We get caught up in the swing back and forth between the two, which can make us feel helpless and caught in doubt. We think, I want to have a clearer sense of what’s needed, but I’m not clear. So I get pulled back and forth. We can be so driven to be absolutely sure and get it right, to make the right decision. We may choose one way and then really regret it and punish ourselves for getting it wrong. It can be compassionate to recognize how much pressure we put on ourselves to find our direction in a relationship. I’ve found that when I actually take that pressure off, that supports a bit more clarity and wisdom in discerning what’s needed. 

The post Ending Relationships with Wisdom appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

A friend and I were walking on the beach just before sunset one day. We walked leisurely and talked little, our words pulled from the air with the same slowness with which our feet moved through the shallow water. It was the kind of afternoon that calls for silence. Above us, the clouds were huge, backlit with that soft glow that signals the day’s end, and at one point we stopped and stared, and my friend remarked that the sky was like a painting. I agreed, and as we were turning to leave, a strange shape over the horizon caught my eye. “What is that?” I asked, pointing at what appeared to be a large triangle hovering over the ocean, rusty red and out of place in all that blue. A moment later, as the low-hanging clouds parted, we realized we were looking at a piece of the moon—illumination at 100 percent, a moon chart later said. Like a child transfixed, I plopped down on the sand right where I was and stared with my mouth agape as a blood-red moon slowly climbed up the sky, leaving a reddish wake on the water.

Syzygy (SIZ-eh-jee) is the alignment of two or more celestial bodies in a straight or near-straight line. An imperfect alignment results in the new and full moons, for example; a perfect one in an eclipse. The term comes from the Greek syzygein, which means “to yoke together.” In addition to astronomy, the concept is also used in biology, mathematics, philosophy, and psychology to refer to the union between two things. Figuratively, a yoke has connotations of subservience: a yoke is a heavy, oppressive burden. But in yoga—the Sanskrit term for “yoke”—this union is between a practitioner and the divine. Likewise, in Buddhism, there’s a metaphor that presents us with a far richer way of thinking about this alignment: Indra’s Diamond Net.

In the Avatamsaka Sutra or Flower Ornament Sutra—a collection of texts compiled beginning around 500 years after the Buddha’s death until about 300 CE—the universe is described as a vast net on whose every node hangs a glittering diamond. On the polished surface of this diamond, every other diamond is reflected, multiplying the reflection into infinity. Each diamond exists both in its own right and is also connected to every other diamond on the net. Just so, each one of us is unique, and connected to every other being and thing in the universe—which means we’re constantly affecting one another in ways known and unknown. 

I never suffer or celebrate by myself, because nothing I do or say or even think exists apart from anything else.

In the seventies, the mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz discovered what he termed the “butterfly effect.” Using a weather model, he showed that even minor environmental fluctuations—like the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil—could set off large and distant weather events, such as a tornado in Texas. Through this experiment, Lorenz was simply confirming what Buddhism has known for millennia. When I touch a strand of the net in my little corner of the world, the whole web trembles. This kind of knowledge confers responsibility, of course, but it also offers great comfort. The image of Indra’s Net is meant to liberate us. It’s meant to free us from the illusion that we’re singular, separate, and solitary. And the fact that we’re thoroughly interconnected means that neither my sadness nor my joy, neither my biggest failing nor my most resounding success is mine alone. I never suffer or celebrate by myself, because nothing I do or say or even think exists apart from anything else. What a relief! What an effective balm for our endemic loneliness. 

When I lived at Zen Mountain Monastery, I loved sitting on rainy afternoons during sesshin, our monthly silent meditation retreat. The mountain seemed especially alive then, and when I felt my energy flagging, I imagined drawing strength and life directly from the woods, the rushing rain, the two streams that converged just beyond the monastery gate and flowed into the Hudson and eventually the Atlantic. The practice never failed. I could start a period of zazen feeling utterly depleted, and after drawing to me the light from all the diamonds surrounding me, I’d gradually become infused with energy.

This yoke is not oppressive but liberating. It’s not burden but ballast. What’s singular is isolated and therefore infinitely fragile. A legion’s strength, on the other hand, is in numbers. Indra’s net reminds us that we’re always aligned—however imperfectly—and always together. When we’re flailing, this is a truth from which we can draw strength.

These are the places where I take refuge these days. A walk on the beach. The space between words. Under a painted sky and a rising moon, swollen with light and impossible to ignore. A sparkling net stretched tautly over reality, its diamond light reflecting endlessly.

I hope you find refuge too, either in places of your own devising or wherever you’re surprised into remembering that you’re not alone, you’re not forsaken. Everything is here, and it all holds you, perfectly.

The post Finding Refuge in Indra’s Net appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Adele Tomlin, author, scholar, translator, Vajrayana practitioner, and founder of Dakini Translations and Publications, discusses Buddhist love and bliss in this short excerpt from Olivia Clementine’s podcast Love & Liberation, which hosts in-depth conversations on spirituality, ecology, and relationships. Listen to the full episode, “Adele Tomlin: The Inner Level of Tantric Union, Celibacy, Bliss & Love,” here.

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Olivia Clementine: I’d love to get into the topic of love. What is love from a Buddhist or tantric perspective? 

Adele Tomlin: Everyone wants to be loved, right? From the Buddhist perspective, there’s not one sentient being who does not want to feel loved in some way. Maybe the word bliss might be more suitable, but we all want some kind of satisfaction. A lot of that satisfaction, particularly in human relationships, but also with animals, comes from feeling loved, or from loving as well.

What is the difference between ordinary love and Buddhist or tantric love? First, what is love? This is a question that musicians and artists have long grappled with. In the Buddhist view, it’s simple. It’s wanting other people to be genuinely happy. Often when we talk about the word “happy,” we feel like it is doing nice things and feeling good. It is connected to that, but happiness in the Buddhist context is not a worldly kind of pleasure or feeling good. Getting a massage feels good, but it’s not what is going to make us happy, in the long term. It feels great, but that feeling wears off, right? It’s the same with our relationships and everything that we do for those sorts of happy feelings. We all know it doesn’t last.  

In a Buddhist context, love is wanting other people to be happy, wishing them that kind of love. But it’s also understanding that what we normally might think of as happiness is not what most people associate with happiness. So, if I’m trying to be a Buddhist practitioner and develop love, what I want to do is think, “I really wish that person, or those people, or those beings will attain real, long-lasting happiness.” What you are wishing them, from the Buddhist perspective, is liberation from samsara, liberation from suffering.

However, love from a Buddhist perspective, or a practitioner’s even, might sometimes seem like it’s not love. From a worldly perspective, people might see a Buddhist doing or saying things that look like aversion or anger, but those actions can be loving if done for beneficial purposes. Sometimes, immature beings, just like children, don’t listen. They put themselves in all sorts of dangerous and risky situations. At those times, there comes a point where, out of love, the method of instruction has to be a bit rougher or harsher. To unknowing eyes, they might look at that and think, “well that doesn’t look very loving.”  

Our worldly notion of love is often self-centered. We look at love from the perspective of what we can get from a person. How do they make me feel? Do they make me feel happy or not? We all habitually do this, including me. This is why we suffer in relationships. When we only selfishly want someone to make us feel good, and then suddenly they don’t, we feel like we don’t love them anymore, right? That is the difficulty. From the Buddhist view, that is why relationships and our romantic relationships generally don’t last.

When our relationships with our family, children, or whoever, become difficult, it is often because–and people don’t want to hear this–we don’t actually love. We don’t love people as much as we think we do. That can be painful to acknowledge, because we often believe, especially with close family and friends, that we truly do love them. In some ways we do. We do want them to be happy, and we do rejoice when good things happen to them.  Yet, those mental states can also be very fragile.  

We’ve all thought we had this love for someone before, romantic relationships being the prime example. Then, all of a sudden, something happened, or a friend said or did something that offended us, and all of a sudden, our love for them has completely gone. What that situation showed us was that we didn’t really love them.

Sometimes we underestimate what it takes to love, to be someone that genuinely loves. We think it’s such a light word, thrown around for everything. And yet it’s a journey to learn how to be here for the benefit of somebody else. Were things ever different? Do you think people understood love differently at other times? That’s a good question. I think there is a kind of nostalgia, maybe, for romantic love and that things were better in the past. We can look at the Buddha’s life, look at why he left his family, his wife, and all that wealth and luxury. That was 2,500 years ago. What we learn from the stories of the Buddha is that, no, things were not necessarily better. The issues regarding attachment, suffering, and conditional love connected to relationships, are very much present in the past as well. They’re kind of fundamental to the human condition. What the Buddha showed us is that, unfortunately, all beings, and not just humans, lack a genuine understanding or application of love. 

But then he did give the example of the mother. Of course, this is an archetype, and not everyone has a great loving mother, but the archetype is this loving mother. Why? Because she does represent, as close as possible in the human realm, I think, this unconditional love. Someone who wants the best for another being. Someone who does not want them to suffer. So, in answer to your question, I don’t think it necessarily was better in the past. Even though some people might think it is or was.

Bringing it back to the topic of bliss and love, how are bliss and love different? I think they are closely connected. Particularly when we are truly in a place of love and sincerely rejoicing. Love and rejoicing are also closely connected. When you love other beings, you rejoice when they are happy, when good things happen to them, when they move closer to liberation, and so on. 

That kind of rejoicing, that kind of joy, that kind of loving state, is in itself a way to connect with the ultimate nature, which is referred to as bliss or being in union with emptiness. Bliss contains those qualities of love, joy, and compassion—all of those beautiful mental qualities of buddhanature—but without any dualistic egoism. In a way, maybe that’s how it’s different from love: rather than a dualistic notion of love, it’s more about just being love.

⧫

In this 5-minute video, “What Is Love?”, Tomlin further explains the Buddhist view of love, attachment, and equanimity in relationships.

The post Everyone Wants to Be Loved appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

As a psychiatrist and Zen priest, Robert Waldinger has devoted much of his professional career to the question of what makes a good life. He currently serves as director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest scientific study of happiness. The study has tracked the lives of participants for over seventy-five years, tracing how childhood experiences and relationships affect health and well-being later in life. In his new book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Waldinger shares what he’s learned from directing the study.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Waldinger to discuss what makes a good life, the common regrets that people have toward the end of their lives, and how his Zen practice informs his work as a psychiatrist. Read an excerpt from their conversation below, and then listen to the full episode.

James Shaheen: A recurring question in the book is: What makes a good life? What has the data shown you in this regard?

Robert Waldinger: To put it in Buddhist terms, a good life is made with sangha. When we studied people throughout their lives, if we wanted to predict who was going to stay healthy and be happier and live longer, we found two key predictors. One, of course, was taking care of your health, and that was not a surprise. But the surprise was that the people who stayed healthier and were happier were the people who had better, warmer connections with other people. Good relationships really predicted well-being over time.

At first, we didn’t believe our own data: How could good relationships help prevent coronary artery disease or make it less likely that you were going to get rheumatoid arthritis? And so we’ve spent the last ten years studying the mechanisms by which our relationships actually get inside our bodies and shape our health. It’s hard to determine for any one person exactly what caused what, but when we look at thousands of lives, as we’ve done, then we can say there are these predictors, and a lot of the predictors stem from relationships and community. There was a developmental researcher, Michael Rutter, who once said that all the data show that what every child needs to grow up healthy is one consistent, caring adult who’s crazy about them. If you have that, you’ve got a huge leg up on a good life.

What are some of the factors that make a relationship successful? What we’ve seen is that it’s important to be able to feel like yourself in a relationship—to feel like you don’t have to stifle, suppress, or hide away parts of yourself. People tend to identify the relationships where they feel like they can be authentic as the most important and most impactful in their lives. That doesn’t mean things have to be smooth all the time. In fact, you can still have a very argumentative relationship with somebody where you feel you can be yourself and that you’re fundamentally respected.

“A good life is made with sangha.”

It’s also important to have people who will be there for you no matter what. We asked our original participants, “List all the people who you could call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared.” Some people could list several people. Some of our participants couldn’t list anybody. We think that having at least one relationship, one person to whom you feel securely attached and securely connected, is an essential component of what keeps us healthy.

In the book, you mention three important factors in maintaining mutually fulfilling relationships: curiosity, generosity, and what you call learning new dance steps. Can you walk us through each of these factors? Curiosity is the act of bringing what we call in Zen beginner’s mind, putting aside all your preconceptions and bringing a curiosity even to the person you feel you know everything about. This can be very useful, especially if you’re going to a family gathering where you know everyone and you know which jokes they’re going to tell. One of my meditation teachers gave me the instruction once to ask myself, “What’s here that I have never noticed before?” I find that extremely useful when I am coming into relationship with somebody who I feel like I’ve known for a long time or I know so much about. You can also bring this sense of curiosity to meeting someone you don’t know by asking them questions, which communicates to them, “I recognize you, I’m interested in you.” You will be amazed at how people will light up in response to that kind of curiosity.

Then there’s generosity. One of the things that meditation practice shows us is our judging minds. One exercise that I love that’s really painful for me is counting how many judgments you make in ten minutes of meditation. I lose count. My mind is filled with judgments all the time. Our minds are going to judge. That’s part of what the human mind does. But we can hold those judgments lightly. We can set them aside and just be with the person in front of us. Of course, there’s also generosity of our resources, time, attention, money, and physical help. All of those are relationship builders.

Then there’s learning new dance steps. I started thinking of it this way when my wife and I took a beginners’ dance class. A lot of the people in the dance class were learning to dance because they wanted to be able to dance at their weddings. We could see that some couples would learn new dance steps together, and they could really move and adjust to each other. And some couples just had a terrible time. What I began to understand is that we’re always having to adapt to each other in relationships. We’re always having to learn new things. My wife and I have been married for thirty-six years. We thought we were signing up for particular people when we committed to each other, and then she and I have both grown and changed a lot. The question is: Can we change in such a way that we adapt to each other? That’s what I mean by learning new dance steps. We thought we knew how to dance well together when we first got together, but our dance moves have changed with each other. Can those dance moves be somewhat harmonious even as we’re both developing into different people? That doesn’t just happen in intimate partnerships. It happens in long friendships. Lord knows it happens in family relationships. You need to allow each other room to have grown out of old patterns.

You also draw from the work of Erik and Joan Erikson in laying out the stages of life. Can you walk us through the stages of what you call a lifetime of adult relationships? How do our relational needs shift as we get older? Erik Erikson and Joan Erikson were wonderful thinkers about adult life. I used to think that when I got to my 20s, I was done. If I was lucky, I’d find a partner, I’d find a profession, and I would just live out the rest of my life. There wouldn’t be much development or much growth. The Eriksons were the first to say that there’s a whole path of development in adult life. Erikson’s idea was that young adulthood is a challenge of achieving intimacy versus isolation. The big question is: Can I find someone to love? Can I find someone to love me? Or am I going to be alone? Many of us do work out that challenge in young adulthood. Some people work it out in their 70s. Stages are helpful frameworks, but we don’t all fit into them perfectly.

Then there is a stage in middle age of generativity versus stagnation. Generativity is the Eriksonian term for fostering the welfare of the next generation. What Erikson said was that we all get to a point in our adult development where we really want to further the lives of those who come next. It could be raising children. It could be mentoring people in our work lives. It could be mentoring younger people in a hobby or in a volunteer activity. It’s a concern beyond the self. And I think we know from Buddhist teachings that when we move beyond the small self, the “I, me, mine” self, we grow, and we thrive. It’s a very important contributor to well-being.

And then old age, Erikson said, was the challenge of integrity versus despair. Integrity is the ability to look back on your life and say, “This was a good enough life. I’ve had a decent run of things” as opposed to despair, or the sense that you’ve wasted your life. Sometimes when we talk about paying attention in meditation practice, we say: don’t miss your life. Don’t be so lost in your head that life goes by and you’re not even here for it, you’re not present. What Erikson said was, we all want to be able to look back and say not that I had a perfect life, but that it was OK. It was good enough.

The post Robert Waldinger, Director of the Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, on What Makes a Good Life appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“You’re a total slacker,” she shouted. “No one can ever please you,” he retorted. “Get your act together,” she continued. “You’re so bossy,” he replied.

In the 1960s as a young counselor I led encounter groups. Many of us were looking for practices to help us speak our minds more freely. In some ways, such free expression proved satisfying. Yet I began to notice that once the initial rush of emotional expression subsided, many group participants still raged at others for presumed slights, projected ill will, and other dissatisfactions. Rather than finding the healing they were looking for, some felt hurt and vulnerable. Even though they were learning to express themselves, something seemed off. Since then, I have discovered other approaches to effective and kind communication through adapting the teachings of Buddhism and systems theory.

In the early ’70s, I spent a year in India immersed in the practice of Buddhist meditation. After I returned to California, my approach to counseling no longer sufficiently fit with the insights I had experienced in India. I started to question some of the assumptions and beliefs I had been bringing to my work. For instance, earlier, when I was unhappy, I assumed either that I was doing something wrong or that something outside of me was wrong. Knowledge of the First Noble Truth—the fact of suffering in life—opened my eyes to the inevitability and impersonality of suffering. I came to see that everyone at times will find life unsatisfactory, so feeling unhappy no longer seemed as personal. Eagerly looking for ways to infuse my work with a Buddhist perspective, I examined teachings on conditioning, causality, mindful discernment, and interdependence.

Today, my work as a marriage and family therapist and communication trainer is profoundly informed by Buddhist teachings as well as a contemporary interpretation of teachings on right speech—communication that is respectful, accurate, and non-harming. Cultivating right speech is similar to cultivating helpful mind-states. Both lead to increased harmony and peace. As we develop more awareness of our habits of speech, we step back and become more discerning about which thoughts and feelings to express (lovingkindness, compassion, etc.) and which to simply notice and let go (hatred, stereotyping, etc.). We can become more skillful about what to say and what not to say to promote harmony.

Right speech is challenging for most people. Habitual beliefs and actions often override intentions for kind communication. People who grew up in families that openly expressed contempt and blame often find those same patterns of speech erupting from their mouths when they’re upset. For example, I worked with a couple who tended to speak to each other with contempt when they were upset, using the same disdainful language that their own parents had used with them. (This style of communication, not surprisingly, correlates with shorter marriages.) By contrast, people raised in families with more skillful communication habits usually have more viable options for handling difficult conversations.

Reflecting on my 1960s encounter groups, I now see that many participants came from families in which they didn’t feel able to express themselves; they enjoyed the “let it all hang out” culture in the groups, speaking their minds without considering the consequences. By inviting participants to speak so freely, group leaders were unwittingly encouraging them to reinforce habitual patterns rather than helping them cultivate expression that encourages equanimity.

Gradually, as I apply the teachings of Buddhism to my work, I see how people can learn to communicate in ways that are more consonant with the inner peace they yearn for. Their use of language can invite right speech or strife. Here’s one example: Sybil says to Richard that she thinks he’s not respecting her when he shows up late for their dates. She then checks out his side of the story, practicing mindful discernment by recognizing that she doesn’t really know what Richard’s lateness means. Before, she would have characterized Richard as a “disrespectful person”—accusing him and provoking his defensiveness. Now, without using disrespectful words, she can ask him for more information.

Responding to Sybil’s skillful speech, Richard is able to listen carefully and reply honestly and kindly. Without defensiveness, he explains that he is often late for appointments and has a general problem being on time. Still, he respects and cares about her. Hearing this, Sybil feels less reactive than she had initially. She understands that his lateness isn’t personal, even though it still frustrates her. The two want to work this out, and by maintaining equanimity and hearing each other’s messages, they both feel optimistic about finding a solution.

Many people forget that they and their loved ones are together on Earth for a short time. Remembering the fact of impermanence adds perspective.

Like meditation, skillful listening—being present to each other’s thoughts and feelings without evaluation—helps open up a dialogue even when people have considerable differences. Mindful listening can nurture a safe place for differences to arise and for people to mutually learn what they can and then move on. When a couple like Sybil and Richard argue, and yet listen to each other’s viewpoints, new insights can arise between them, leading to more clarifying conversations. Likewise, skillful talking encourages skillful listening.

Sadly, knowing about right speech is different from being able to implement it. The way we treat others can be deeply ingrained. For instance, when people hear a different point of view, they often automatically agree, disagree, judge, or evaluate. Knowing how to listen and talk skillfully often requires practicing new behaviors that take time to learn. If the listener practices putting her own thoughts and feelings aside and makes a space for just listening, then understanding becomes more likely. I’ve found that as people practice new communication styles, especially mindful listening and non-blaming speech, their sense of who they are and what’s possible can profoundly shift.

Another practice I’ve incorporated into my work is recognizing positive intentions. I’ve noticed that when couples acknowledge their mutual positive intentions, they’re less likely to vent emotions, encounter group–style, without considering the consequences. As psychologist Daniel Goleman points out in Emotional Intelligence, when people are angry, their reasoning diminishes. By keeping emotions at a lower level, even someone who is upset can anticipate the effect her words might have on her partner.

Focusing on the insight of impermanence is another practice that enhances our relationships. Many people forget that they and their loved ones are together on Earth for a short time. Remembering the fact of impermanence adds perspective. Sometimes we lose some of the pleasure of connection when we focus excessively on changing someone else’s behavior to satisfy our own desires. Often, others won’t or can’t change. That’s when the advice of the third Zen patriarch can help:

“Life is easy for those who are not attached to their preferences.”

For example, if I get upset when my brother doesn’t call me as often as I’d like and then badger him to call, he might feel less inclined to do so. When we talk, in that moment, I’m probably thinking that he’s making me feel bad. I’m forgetting that life is short. I don’t know how many conversations we have left. I may not be able to influence him to call me more often. If I want to enjoy him more fully, I’ll cultivate appreciation for whatever we can share together right now.

***

My approach to communication has also been influenced by systems theory, which overlaps Buddhist teachings in the domain of interdependence. Systems theory explores how parts of a system (individuals, spouses, various species) interact to organize the whole system (a family, a couple, an ecosystem). When we communicate, we form a living system. The parts of our system mutually affect each other—a classic dharmic example of interdependence.

Each part of a system is contingent upon all other parts, with things changing in ways we can’t necessarily predict or control, and at the same time, everything in a system is dynamically in balance with everything else. The importance of this interdependence and the ways we constantly affect each other often go unrecognized by members of a relationship system. But when we do reflect on our interdependence, this can lead to changes—like explicitly expressing more frequent and sincere appreciation—that ripple throughout the system, enhancing goodwill and cooperation. On the other hand, some research suggests that when someone is angry and delivers a nasty message—name-calling, putdowns, etc.—this can undo the goodwill that had been generated by approximately twenty previous acts of kindness. Unfortunately, the cleanup work needed to counter a single nasty message as it echoes throughout the system can be daunting.

Both Buddhism and systems theory present causality as more than the view that one event directly causes another. I first realized the slipperiness of causal interpretations when I taught undergraduate family studies courses at the University of Minnesota. When given an assignment to write about their family-of-origin experiences, my students ascribed seemingly opposite “causes” to the same outcome. Some attributed their need for a lot of physical affection from their partners to the fact that their parents were unaffectionate with each other and with their children, while others attributed their need for affection to the fact that their parents were extremely affectionate. Seemingly opposite situations were cited as causing the same outcome. I found the causal reasoning confusing.

Understanding relationships through systems theory counters the tendency to blame. We forget that many causes and conditions contribute to how we feel. Each effect follows many previous effects. It is highly unlikely that I can isolate a single variable, such as what you said last night, and label that as the cause for my reaction today. Yet people still use phrases like “you made me feel insecure,” implying that a single cause—your criticism—created my reaction. The way people respond depends on many factors, from last night’s sleep to this morning’s headlines.

Insights into causality and blame from both Buddhism and systems theory can help people realize that they are not simply victims and that they can look to themselves to improve their mind-states and situations. When people make the assumption that their feelings are controlled by what others say to them, this engenders a sense of powerlessness. In addition, thinking others can control us leads to the belief that others must change in order for us to feel better. If, on the other hand, we understand that many factors influence behavior, blame becomes a less accurate way to describe experience. Using mindful discernment to consider the influence of other causes and conditions can lead to greater awareness, more options for change, and the insight that there may be some actions we ourselves can take to improve the situation.

Finally, the application of systems theory to the practice of communication encourages a dynamic balance between stability and change. If people can’t adequately express their differing perspectives, they sometimes find that their relationship is too static and they might feel bored. This dynamic often arises in families that avoid conflict at all costs; certain viewpoints may seem too dangerous to express, such as acknowledging Dad’s history of alcoholism. Members of such a family may not realize that perspectives that trigger controversy are a natural and potentially helpful part of life. Differences are bound to occur and can stimulate difficult yet invigorating conversations.

On the other hand, if the expression of differences becomes too extreme (as witnessed in encounter groups), chaos may ensue. When people feel overwhelmed and are unable to hear each other’s viewpoints, their differences can escalate, leading to polarization and vulnerability within their system. The key is in the balance—or the “Middle Way”—to mindfully express differences so that they are perceived as workable. Skillfully working with conflict often strengthens a family or other human system. A communication style infused with Buddhist principles and systems theory can encourage compassionate right speech, resulting in enhanced harmony and stability.

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From the Fall 2009 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 26, No. 1) © 2009 Mudita Nisker

Related Inquiring Mind articles:

• “Seeing Clearly?“
• “Reunion on the Path of No Speech“
• “Interview with Marshall Rosenberg: The Traveling Peacemaker“

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