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Keep The Communication Alive
When experiencing anger, sadness, or bitterness, there are eight specific inquiries regarding what is needed from others:
- Do you want to be alone?
- Do you want them to comfort you?
- Do you want them to listen to you?
- Do you want them to understand you?
- Do you want them to ask you questions?
- Do you want them to tell you what to do?
- Do you want them to get angry back at you?
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Do you want them to explain everything to you?
The responses indicate a fundamental desire for comfort, listening, and understanding, while rejecting questions, instructions, retaliation, or explanations.
Keeping communication alive is the most important practice; it is a life vest that prevents drowning in the ocean of suffering. When anger arises, touching and talking become difficult, marking the beginning of hell. Parents and children must maintain this conversation, sharing their difficulties and suffering to allow for mutual understanding and healing. To resolve conflict, one must look deeply into the nature of suffering and how it has been nourished. Everything is food—television, books, and conversations—and ingesting toxins feeds the internal blocks of pain. Recognizing the First Noble Truth of suffering leads to the Second Noble Truth, seeing the causes of that suffering in what has been consumed.
Communication skills alone are insufficient without a transformation at the base (āśraya-parāvṛtti). True restoration of relationships requires compassionate listening, where the sole intention is to relieve the other’s suffering without judgment or reaction. Reconciliation with parents, even those who have passed away, is possible by realizing that the transmitter, the object transmitted, and the receiver are one; we are the continuation of our ancestors. The practice of the Three Prostrations aids in accepting all ancestors and descendants, regardless of imperfections. By visualizing oneself as a vulnerable five-year-old child, and seeing one’s parents also as fragile five-year-old children, the energy of compassion is born, breaking the cycle of samsara.
