*****
When you can listen like that for one hour to the other person, he or she will
get relief. During the whole time of listening, you keep your practice of mindful
breathing, in order to maintain compassion. If these two things do not exist
during the time of listening, your listening will not have a good effect. Even
if the other side says things that are full of wrong perceptions, blaming and
judgment, you are still capable of listening with compassion. This is extremely
important. And that is possible only with the practice of mindful breathing
and the maintaining of compassion during the whole time of listening. We have
to train ourselves for at least one week in order to be able to do it and to
help our beloved one get relief.
When you are the person who speaks, you practice gentle speech, loving speech.
You have the right, and you have a duty to tell the other group of people, the
other person, what is in your heart. But you have to use the kind of language
that can convey your feelings, that can convey your insights, your suffering
to the other person; namely, the language of love and kindness. If you do not
use the language of love and kindness, then you touch off the energy of anger
and hatred in the other person, and he or she will not be able to listen to
you. That is why it is very important to practice loving speech, gentle speech.
That is the subject of the fourth mindfulness training in the Buddhist tradition.
So, with the assistance and the support of the Plum Village community, the two
groups sit down and practice listening to each other and using gentle speech.
It works very well always. Listening like that in the presence of many, many
other practitioners, you realize-- maybe for the first time-- that on the other
side they are human beings also, and they have already suffered very deeply
because of anger, of hatred, of violence, of despair. The moment that you realize
they are human beings who have suffered deeply also, compassion begins to arise
in your heart, and now you are able to look at them with the eyes of compassion.
You have become a Bodhisattva, capable of using the eyes of compassion in order
to look at other living human beings.
Fourteen days or twenty-one days can produce a miracle. There are people who
say, after having been in Plum Village, "I believe that peace is possible
in the Middle East." Both groups want to bring home the practice; to organize
sessions of practice among friends. Now they have set up Sanghas, communities
of practice--a little bit everywhere in the Middle East. And they want to maintain
their practice, because their practice helped them maintain compassion and insight,
[and allowed them] not to be drowned in the ocean of despair.
It is our conviction that if their leaders come together and practice the same
kind of practice, they will be able to bring peace and reconciliation to the
Middle East. If we practice, if we organize a peace conference supported by
many nations, and if we organize so that the two parties have a chance to try
this kind of practice, then the peace conference will bring a wonderful result.
Because if you still have a lot of anger, a lot of suspicion, a lot of hatred,
it would be extremely difficult for you to come to an agreement that will really
bring peace and well-being to the two nations, the two people.
*****
I would like to tell you the story of a couple who live in California. They
have practiced in this mindful way. The lady, who is a Catholic, wanted to commit
suicide, because she had suffered so much. There was no joy in her life anymore.
Her husband was like a bomb, ready to explode at any time. He had a lot of anger,
a lot of bitterness, a lot of frustration, a lot of violence in him. The three
children, who attended university, were very afraid of coming close to their
father. Their father would get angry at anything--would explode at any time.
He believed that his wife and his three children were boycotting him, and that
made his anger and frustration grow bigger and bigger every day.
*****
The lady had a friend, a Buddhist practitioner, who was aware of her situation,
and who had tried to persuade her to listen to a Dharma talk given by her teacher.
The title of the Dharma talk, in the form of a cassette tape, is "How to
Diffuse a Bomb." When you contain within yourself too much violence, too
much anger, you become very tense. You become like a bomb. You suffer very much,
and you spill your suffering all over the people who live with you, and people
are afraid of you. They don't want to approach you, and then you believe that
everyone is boycotting you. You are extremely lonely.
The Buddhist lady believed that if her friend listened to the Dharma talk, she
would know how to help diffuse the bomb in her husband. But that lady considered
herself a Catholic. She said, "I am a Catholic. Why should I listen to
this kind of stuff?"
But the morning that [the lady] called and announced that she was going to die,
her Buddhist friend asked her to come over right away. She wanted to see her
for the last time, and this time she tried her best to convince the lady to
listen to the talk. She said, "You always said that I am your best friend,
and the only thing I ask you to do is to listen to the Dharma talk of my teacher.
I don't think that you are truly my friend." That challenge helped. The
lady told herself, "Now, I am going to die. Why don't I satisfy the person
I consider to be my friend." So she agreed to listen to the Dharma talk.
The Buddhist lady withdrew in order to allow her friend to be alone in the living
room, and she began to listen to the cassette tape. As she listened to the Dharma
talk, insight came to her. She recognized the fact that the suffering in her
had not been created only by her husband, but by herself. And the suffering
in her husband had not been created by her husband alone, but she had participated
in creating the suffering in him. When she listened to the Dharma talk, she
realized that in the last six years, she never used the kind of language that
is called loving speech. She always blamed him. She always used a very sour
language, full of blaming and judgment. She realized she had made the situation
worse every day, and she felt that she was partly responsible for her own suffering
and the suffering of her husband.
When you suffer, you have the tendency to blame the other person as the only
source of your suffering. You don't recognize that you are responsible to some
extent for your suffering, and you have also created the suffering of the other
person. That was her insight during the time that she listened to the talk,
and her heart opened, and for the first time in so many years, she felt sorry.
She felt compassion for herself and for her husband.
She was animated, inspired by the idea of going home and helping her husband
by practicing listening deeply, listening with compassion. She became very enthusiastic.
But her Buddhist friend said, "No, my friend. You are still very weak.
You have to train yourself at least one week in order to be able to do so. Because
if you listen to him, and if his language is full of blaming and wrong perceptions,
you will interrupt him and spoil everything. You have to train yourself first.
Let me propose to you this. My teacher is coming from France, and he is going
to offer in the Bay area two retreats, one for the Vietnamese-speaking people
and one for the English-speaking people. Why don't you sign up for the first
retreat?"
The Catholic lady accepted, and during the six-day retreat, she practiced with
all her heart, because for her it was a matter of life and death. That is why
she invested herself entirely into the practice. She learned how to breathe,
how to walk, how to embrace the suffering in her, how to use the kind of loving
speech that will be able to open the heart of her husband. And with the support
of other practitioners, she went very deeply into the practice.
The night that she came home, she put into practice what she had learned on
the retreat. She was very silent that night, practicing mindful breathing, mindful
walking. And, finally, she came and sat down close to [her husband], and she
began to speak. She said, "My husband, I know that you have suffered terribly
during the past six or seven years. I have not been able to help you, and I
have made the situation worse. I am sorry. I did not know how to listen to you.
I didn't know what was going on in your heart, in your mind. I was blind. I
was unable to see. And that is why I have made the situation worse. I didn't
want you to suffer. I wanted you to be happy, but because I did not know how,
I have made the situation worse. So, please, my husband, please help me. Please
tell me what is in your heart. I want to understand so that I will not repeat
the unskillful things I have done. I am very sorry. You have to help me; alone
I cannot change."
She was very surprised to see him begin to cry like a little boy. Seeing that,
she knew that the door of communication had opened. So she practiced mindful
breathing, deeply, and she insisted, "Please, my husband, please tell me
what is in your heart. I will try to listen. I will try to understand. I want
you to be happy. I don't want you to suffer."
It turned out, that that night was a very healing night for both of them. She
was very successful in her practice of deep listening and using loving speech,
and she was able to restore communication. She was able to convince him to sign
up for the second retreat of mindfulness. And during the last day of the second
retreat, he stood up and he introduced his wife as a bodhisattva. (A bodhisattva
in Buddhism means an enlightened being who is able to help other people to be
enlightened, also.)
*****
It is my conviction that the practice of the Israeli and Palestinian groups,
the practice of that couple in California can be applied as the practice in
the international political scenery. The principle of the practice is to go
home to yourself and listen to your own suffering and raise your own suffering
and despair and fear. That is what I proposed last year after 9/11. Two days
after the 9/11 event, I spoke to four thousand people in Brooklyn. I proposed
that America should go back to herself, practicing mindful breathing and embracing
the pain, the suffering, the fear, the anger, and listening to the suffering
of America. On the 25th of September that year, I spoke at the Riverside Church
in New York City with Ambassador Andrew Young. We went to Ground Zero the day
after, and I again proposed that [America] should embrace this practice of going
home to herself, listening to her own suffering; that she must bring relief
to herself before she can do something to help the situation in the world.
In the United States of America, there are people-- sections of the population--
who feel that they are victims of social injustice and discrimination. They
feel that they have never been listened to. Suffering is there in America, and
America has to practice listening to her own pain and suffering. This is the
first step. There are vast resources of peace in this country. There are those
of us in America who have the capacity to listen deeply and with compassion
to the suffering of America. We should be able to look around, to identify them,
and to invite them to come in order to form a parliament for deep listening,
a kind of counsel of sages, in order to practice listening to the suffering
of our own nation, of our own people. Then we should be able to invite those
people who have felt that they're victims of social injustice and discrimination
to come in order to tell us about their suffering. We should have people who
come and help them to practice calming, embracing their suffering, help them
use the kind of language that can convey the suffering, the feeling within themselves,
exactly like in the case of that couple, exactly like in the case of the Palestinians
and Israelis in Plum Village.
.
America can act compassionately within her frontiers in order to heal the wounds,
to mend the wounds within America first. This is the first step. We cannot do
the second step before we can make the first step. If you want to help other
countries, other groups of people like Afghanistan and the others, we have to
help ourselves first,
all of us know that this has to begin with one's
self. So, acting with compassion and wisdom within our own frontiers is the
first step.
*****
Then bringing that practice into the international levels, America can ask other
nations to help create sessions of deep listening where America can participate.
Around the world there are those who are capable of being compassionate, of
being attentive, of being able to listen deeply. You shall invite them to come
and listen. Other groups who believe that they have been victims of injustice,
that they are mistreated by America and other big nations, they are invited
to come and to tell the world about their suffering, their fear, their anger.
If we have not been able to listen to our fear, our anger, we cannot listen
and understand the fear and the anger of other nations and people. Then there
are those of us who can come as volunteers to help these people to breathe,
to walk, to calm down, to use the kind of language that can convey what is deep
in their heart.
*****
Looking deeply, we realize that hate, violence, anger, and terrorism are
born from wrong perceptions. [Others] may have wrong perceptions of themselves,
and they may have wrong perceptions of us, and they have acted on the basis
of these wrong perceptions. In order for them not to continue, the only way
is to help them remove these wrong perceptions of themselves and of us, and
that work cannot be done by the Army. That work cannot be done by bombs and
guns. That can only be done with the practice of deep listening, compassionate
listening, and loving speech. We have to support our political leaders in this
practice.
*****
One of the deepest teachings given by Buddha is that you should not be too sure
of your perceptions. You have to practice looking deeply in order not to be
fooled by your perceptions. If you are a doctor, you have to be very careful.
Even if you are sure, check again. This kind of practice should be applied in
our political life also.
The mass media has the duty of informing the people about what is happening.
Journalists, reporters should be able to be calm, not to be carried away by
their emotions, their feelings, their anger, their despair, in order to report
well, to reflect the situation with more accuracy. Our political leaders have
to train themselves in order not to be carried away by fear, by anger. They
should be able to retain their lucidity for the sake of the nation and of the
world. When fear and anger has become collective, the situation becomes extremely
dangerous for everyone. That is why we have to bring a spiritual dimension to
our political life.
*****
You have elected your government. You have elected your House of Representatives
and your Senate. You should continue to support them. You should continue to
give them the kind of information that helps them correct their poor perceptions.
The situation of our country, of our world, is [too important] to be entrusted
only to politicians. As a mother, as a father, as a school teacher, as a doctor,
you have to practice in order to remain calm, in order to look deeply, in order
to understand, and you have to convey your insight, your compassion to your
elected people. You have to practice. We cannot leave the matter only to our
politicians.
In Buddhist psychology, we speak of consciousness in terms of seeds. In the
lower level, lower layer of our consciousness, there is a part that is called
store consciousness. Store consciousness is the place where all the seeds of
mental formations are preserved. There is a seed of fear; there is a seed of
anger; there is a seed of despair; there is a seed of peace; there is a seed
of joy; there is a seed of loving kindness--all the good seeds and all the negative
seeds that have been transmitted to us by our ancestors, our parents. It depends
on the environment where we live, [but] such seeds can be watered several times
a day. Our children watch television three hours a day or even more. And during
the time they watch television, their seed of fear, of anger, of craving may
be watered, and they continue to grow. We have to create, we have to produce
television programs that are able to water the seed of compassion, joy, peace,
loving kindness.
That is why mindful consumption is very important. When you read a magazine,
you consume. When you listen to music, you consume. When we begin a conversation,
we consume, because a conversation can also be highly toxic. If a man or a woman
is full of fear, of despair, of hatred, and if we listen to him or to her for
an hour, the poisons will penetrate into store consciousness, and make the seed
of fear and anger grow very quickly. That is why the practice of mindful consumption,
including consumption of conversation, is very crucial for self-protection,
for the protection of our family and society.
*****
... We should be able to stop violence and to take up the path of reconciliation
and peace. This is possible. I have the conviction that America has enough wisdom
and courage and compassion in order to pick up that path of reconciliation and
healing.
*****
When we listen to the other person, to the other group of persons, you get insight
about their suffering, their difficulty, their fear, and their anger. And at
the same time, you realize that we do have wrong perceptions also. We have done,
we have said things that have created misunderstanding. We have not understood
us completely. We have not understood them completely. We vow to practice in
order to have a better understanding of ourselves and of them so that our action
will be in the direction of peace.
America will learn a lot with the practice of deep listening and compassionate
listening. The insights she will get will be able to serve as the ground for
repairing the damage she has done to herself in America and she has done in
other parts of the world. She will be able to help remove the wrong perceptions
of the people outside of America, about America, and about themselves. It is
my conviction that [she must work to] remove wrong perceptions--for that is
the base, the foundation of hatred and violence and terrorism. That work cannot
be done by the bombs. It should be done by the practice of deep listening, compassionate
listening, and loving speech.
*****
My dear friends, peace is not something we can only hope for. Peace is something
we can contemplate in our daily life by our practice of mindful breathing, mindful
walking, embracing our fear, our anger, producing the energy of understanding
and compassion. And with that element of peace in us, we should be able to support
our government, our Congress. And let us remember that peace is in our hands.
We can do something for peace every day. Let us practice as individuals. Let
us practice as communities, as Sanghas, and let us give peace a chance.