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Entries from September 1, 2024 - September 30, 2024

Saturday
Sep282024

Before voicing an opinion,
be sure the one you are speaking to 
wishes to hear it.

On one occasion, a monk asked the Buddha if he would speak to a certain woman.

Agreeing, the Buddha went to the woman. Seeing him approach, she turned away. The Buddha calmly walked around to face her again. She looked up. The Buddha moved so that he was again within her eyesight, but this time she looked down.

The Buddha then told the monk that the woman did not wish to listen to him. The Buddha wasn’t upset. He calmly accepted that conditions weren’t right for her to listen to him.

So unlike us—the unawakened and opinionated people of today.

Having neglected to first get a person’s okay to offer our opinion, we just plunge into giving it anyhow. The person may listen politely but sigh inwardly. She may mentally roll her eyes. Or argue. The chance of her eagerly saying “Wow! Thanks!” have become slim. Instead of helping, we’ll have irritated someone. And possibly, permanently turned the person off.

 

Friday
Sep272024

Wednesday
Sep252024

“If anything I have said or done has offended you, . .

Sunday
Sep222024

From Rage to forgiveness: What Lies Between : Online Event

 

Monday
Sep162024

Others have managed to forgive,
how can we?

Hearing accounts of others who have forgiven, we may well wonder how they managed it?
Just as we hope for forgiveness, others do as well. Their hope may be buried in the emotions of the moment. Initially, we will find it hard to convince ourselves that a raging, bitter, or screaming individual is seeking forgiveness. It’s hardly the way we would act in similar circumstances.

What the person so desperately wants is for their pain and suffering—their experienced humiliation, injury, fear, alienation, whatever—to stop. They don’t know that this is what they want, so they don’t yet know how to make it happen.

Recognizing what they are going through, we will better understand why they are acting the way they are. And by understanding, we will be much better placed to empathize with them. And by empathizing, just maybe we will be able to somehow figure out how to help diffuse the situation.

Or, at the very least, not make it worse.