As we are gathered here today in friendship and community, taking a moment out of our busy lives,... to learn, share and reflect on the insights, experiences and wisdom of others, we are reminded of how blessed we all are. In the current world around us there are many who suffer and face grave challenges. We stand in solidarity with them in compassion and by practicing loving kindness to ourselves and all those around us. Taking a couple of stanzas from Metta or compassion meditation, let us engage in the power of prayer that connect us - irrespective of religion - with our beliefs and ideals more deeply helping us to hold them in our minds as we go about our daily business, and helping us to develop a stronger sense of conviction. Let us pray the following in the name of all that is good.
Practice the Art of Compassion If You Want a More Peaceful Workplace
Oh Lord, as we work together to build your empire, let us be the light that leads the world to you. God, teach us to be good role models to the people around us, so that when they see you and your love within us, they would want to know you more and more. God grant us the patience to work together, bring us all together as a family. Let us work together with understanding and compassion in our hearts. Let us not be rude or arrogant towards one another, as we light the way to your heavenly kingdom.
Yep, take a closer look, my friend. I know it may feel uncomfortable but if we want to grow, we must become more self-aware. Get curious and self-compassionate. Put your self-judgments aside and realize that you, that all of us, have opportunities for growth. For two minutes a day for this entire week, tune in. How are you feeling emotionally? What have you been thinking about? This mindfulness assessment from Harvard Business Review can help you assess your current level of awareness.
Self-compassion and self-love are largely used interchangeably in specialized literature. Research shows that having more self-compassion builds resilience in the face of adversity, helping people to recover more quickly from trauma or romantic separation. It also helps us to better cope with failure or embarrassment.
In her book Self-Compassion, Prof. Neff details many more useful mantras and guides the reader to develop their own. Also, her website self-compassion.org offers a wide range of similar exercises, which are accessible for free.
Mindfulness, also known as meditation, is the practice of cultivating present awareness of our moment-to-moment experience.[2] While meditation and mediation share nine letters in common, they also both promote peace through process and ritual.[3] I incorporate mindfulness into both my teaching and my mediation practice to such an extent that I think of myself as a mindful mediator. You do not need to be a mediator to do your part in creating a more peaceful world!
Being present and aware of our feelings, thoughts, and experiences is key helping us to not react in anger either towards others or ourselves. Seeing ourselves as separate and apart from others and their views makes developing compassion more difficult. In this way inner peace can help us to cultivate greater self-acceptance and compassion. In turn, that will enable us to be more deliberate and peaceful in our responses to others. As a result, working to develop our own inner peace is directly working to develop societal peace.
This all sounds great, you might be thinking, but sometimes it is not easy to talk with people with whom we disagree so fundamentally. It is difficult to develop compassion in those instances. How can mindfulness help me be more persuasive and manage difficult conversations?
As a mindfulness practice, reflection has an even more important role. When I am prepared to reflect (whether or not I actually do), it provides my mind with something to do and quiets the impulse to judge what is being said, and interrupt with a response. Preparing to reflect keeps me present and in the moment and stops me from thinking about what you are saying. It helps me to stop immediately launching a verbal counterattack. It quiets my inner dialogue and enables me to listen to what is being said. The very act of being ready to reflect is enough to help my mind focus on what is being said.
When we can simply allow life to unfold naturally without being attached to outcomes, beliefs, feelings or opinions, then we experience true non-attachment. Picture this process of detachment like being an ice cube that slowly melts down into a puddle of flowing water. Water, like the practice of non-attachment, flows with life effortlessly and peacefully, whereas ice cubes do not. The goal of non-attachment, therefore, is to become like water.
Non-attachment and letting go, go hand in hand. If you want more guidance on how to let go, I recommend checking out our article 42 Powerful Ways of Letting Go of Anger and Heartbreak. This article is packed to the brim full of helpful tips and advice.
Thich Nhat Hanh passed away at the age of 95 on Friday, January 22, and leaves a legacy that goes beyond Buddhism and into the heart of what it means to be human, and how to put compassion and nonviolence into practice.
We also share the teaching of the practice of listening with compassion and using loving speech in order to restore communication. Nowadays, we have a lot of sophisticated means of communication. But communication between husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, has become much, much more difficult. And we witness to the fact that many fathers cannot speak to their son. Many sons and daughters cannot listen to their father. And if there is no communication, how could we hope to help each other remove our wrong perceptions in order to make peace with each other?
And if you are the listener, and then you practice breathing in and out to calm yourself, to remember that to listen to the other person is a practice of compassion because if you know how to listen deeply with compassion, in one hour you can help relieve a lot of suffering in the other person.
And because of that, for the first time, you can look at them with the eyes of compassion. You recognize them as living beings. Human beings like you. Before that, you think that only your side suffers. The other side never suffered. The other side only want you to suffer. But now after a few sessions of deep listening and compassionate listening, you recognize that they have suffered tremendously like your side. And listening like that helped them to suffer less and help you to suffer less at the same time.
And as a Buddhist, we are able to produce many thoughts like that in a day. In the line of right thinking we produce only thoughts of understanding, compassion, forgiveness. And when we are able to produce, to practice right thinking and then of course our speech will be right speech, promoting understanding, hope, brotherhood/sisterhood, and our actions will be right action.
So, to consume less, to live a more simple life is the only way out. And in our community, especially Buddhist communities, we already begin to implement that kind of teaching and practice. In our monasteries in Europe and America, no one of us has a private car. No one of us has a private laptop or a private telephone. No one of us has a private bank account. And we survive very well. And we are happy together as a sangha.
And that means that to live a simple life and to be happy, that is something possible. And I think that is the teaching of Lord Buddha to be implemented in our life, reducing our consumption, learning to live more simply, to have more time to take care of oneself. And to take care of our beloved ones, is very crucial, is the practice of peace, is the way out.
And the Buddha wanted to remind them that conditions of happiness are already available in the here and the now. If they know how to practice mindful breathing and go back to the present moment, they will recognize that there are enough or more than enough conditions for you to be happy right in the here and the now.
Experiencing forgiveness either towards self or others can have a constructive, life-altering effect as part of the process of healing personal pain and trauma as well as building more peaceful communities.
Learning to forgive yourself gives you the freedom to heal, let go, and move on. It is a tool that allows you to become more self-aware. Moreover, some believe that you cannot forgive another until you have learned self-compassion and self-forgiveness. In this sense, forgiveness is a movement of compassion; and learning to forgive yourself is an important step in learning to become a forgiving person.
Finally, go easy on yourself. All of this advice is about practice. And as you'll learn, practice doesn't make you "perfect", it makes you a student. Self-compassion is a powerful practice for peace.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) has been described as a language of compassion, as a tool for positive social change, and as a spiritual practice. NVC gives us the tools and consciousness to understand what triggers us, to take responsibility for our reactions, and to deepen our connection with ourselves and others, thereby transforming our habitual responses to life. Ultimately, it involves a radical change in how we think about life and meaning. NVC is based on a fundamental principle:
Learning NVC is a process similar to learning a new language or skill: step-by-step learning coupled with ample time for practice lead to growing mastery. While it takes time to develop fluency, any knowledge of a new language makes it more likely that communication can take place. In addition, because NVC invites us to a level of vulnerability and caring that often are not familiar or habitual, full integration of the consciousness underlying this language is likely to require changes in our internal connection to ourselves, and healing of past pain.
When we are able to describe what we see or hear in observation language without mixing in evaluation, we raise the likelihood that the person listening to us will hear this first step without immediately wanting to respond and will be more willing to hear our feelings and needs. 2ff7e9595c
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