EP 514: The Importance of Understanding

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh talks about planting lettuce. If we plant lettuce and it doesn’t grow, we don’t blame the lettuce and yell at it, expecting some change to occur. If our lettuce won’t grow, we try to understand why. We check how much light, water, and fertilizer the lettuce receives and determine, with our understanding, whether an adjustment will help the lettuce grow. But when we encounter circumstances and people in our daily lives who don’t treat us the way we think we should be treated, we tend to do the opposite that we’d do with the lettuce. We place blame and allow our anger and resentment to spring forth. We don’t try to understand how this person may be lacking some essential nourishment that has resulted in the undesired behavior. In today’s episode, I take a deep dive into this topic and offer other examples and some ideas on how to cultivate more understanding: But as I also mention today, we can (but often don’t) apply this same logic to our inner selves. That is, we can prioritize the understanding of our inner nature, which is a form of love. And when we take this approach, we can see that, just like the lettuce, we may be missing some nourishment and that this is the root of this aspect of ourselves that makes us suffer. When we do this, it becomes very simple to just give ourselves the care and nourishment that will alleviate our suffering. And this is what my upcoming course, Anger, Transformed, is all about. It’s about reframing our approach and our relationship to our difficult emotions so we can enter into a loving and understanding relationship to them. If you’re interested in joining this program, you can sign up here: https://artburnscoaching.activehosted.com/f/7 If you have questions, please email me at [email protected] Also, you are cordially invited to join our donation-based meditation and discussion group tomorrow, Saturday, at 9:00 am MST. Here is the link to register: https://www.meetup.com/learning-to-surf-talks-on-buddhism-meditation-mindfulness/events/gggcgsycchbdc/ And finally, if you’d like to talk about anything else; if you’d like to ask me a question or make any kind of request, I invite you to click this link and schedule your no-cost coaching session with me: https://calendly.com/artburns/45-min-coaching-session