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The Eyes of Compassion, Deep Listening, and Loving Speech
Whenever we love someone, we want that person to be safe, protected, and free from accidents. To generate this energy of protection, we need to practice the teaching of looking at living beings with the eyes of compassion – using the eyes of love to look at life. In each person, there is a seed of love, compassion, forgiveness, understanding, and equality, but if they are not watered every day, they cannot grow. The practice of mindfulness requires us to have a policy of intelligent consumption in the spirit of the Fifth Precept, deciding not to consume products of listening, looking, or reading that contain toxins that water the bad seeds such as hatred, discrimination, violence, craving, and despair. Instead, the whole family needs to sit down together to water the good seeds by listening to Dharma talks, reading nourishing books, and practicing consumption in mindfulness to protect both body and mind.
Understanding is the foundation of love. When someone makes another person suffer, it is because they have too much suffering and resentment within themselves and do not know how to handle it, while also being caught in wrong perceptions. To remove wrong perceptions and to transform hatred, we need to practice the two methods of wonder of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara:
- Listening (deep listening): listening with a compassionate heart to help the other person have a chance to speak out the suffering and resentment in their heart without judging or interrupting.
- Loving speech: using gentle and harmonious words to express the truth and establish mutual understanding.
This practice needs to be applied first to ourselves and within our families to resolve conflicts between parents and children, and then expanded to the international level to deal with violence and terrorism in the spirit of the Four Noble Truths. By recognizing suffering and the roots of suffering, we can find the path out of suffering without the use of guns and bullets. When we know how to use the eyes of love to look at life, we are able not only to heal ourselves and to transform the three greatest toxins of greed, anger, and delusion in our consciousness, but also to bring true happiness to those around us.
Part of the following collection
Samaddhi Discourse 2