Hi all
As part of trying to improve my ability to respond to others, I am currently reading a book called How to Listen. This is produced by an organisation called Samaritans (after the Christian parable) that provides free, non-judgemental emotional support to people in the UK and Ireland.
One of the early parts of the books which stood out for me recounted how volunteers to the organisation are taught to imagine that the person on the end of the telephone, or online chat, may be having a hard time and weighed down with thoughts and emotions like they are in a pit they cannot climb out of. Most people’s first notion is how to get them out of the pit, and this is how our friends and family will usually react, and we are used to thinking of solutions and being fixers. I freely admit this is often my approach too.
This book says something different. Instead of being fixers, the volunteers are told to imagine climbing into the pit to sit alongside the person there and be with them, dropping all notions of solutions or results but just to listen and see what is going on (an approach which sounds a lot like Zazen). Sometimes, as a result of that, the pit can feel less deep to the caller, or the sides less steep, but not necessarily. Regardless, for as long as they want, they are not alone down there.
The image of being willing to climb into the pit with someone else reminds me of the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha, known as Jizō in Japanese Buddhism. The name Kṣitigarbha literally means Bodhisattva of the Great Vow (Jp. Daigan Jizō Bosatsu) and he is said to be responsible for teaching the dharma to beings in all six realms of existence (the realms of gods, titans, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings). His responsibility for beings who find themselves in hell is particularly emphasised as, like the Samaritans volunteers, he is willing to climb down into the pit with others to bring them succour.
Some modern Buddhist teachers have compared the six realms to psychological states and whereas hell is usually associated with intense anger or hatred, it is easy to see how extreme despair could be viewed in a similar way as comprising a personal form of hell. We might not be able to pull someone out of that hell, but we can certainly join them there for a while.
As Jundo sometimes says, who are the hands and eyes of Kannon Bosatsu (Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva) if not you and I? Likewise, who else are the arms and ears of Jizō? When there is so much suffering in the world it is easy to be overwhelmed by how much needs fixing but perhaps we do not have to start there. I am sure that most of us have had sufficient experience of our own personal hells to be able to connect to others in their's and recognise that their suffering and ours is, in the end, 'not two'.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
As part of trying to improve my ability to respond to others, I am currently reading a book called How to Listen. This is produced by an organisation called Samaritans (after the Christian parable) that provides free, non-judgemental emotional support to people in the UK and Ireland.
One of the early parts of the books which stood out for me recounted how volunteers to the organisation are taught to imagine that the person on the end of the telephone, or online chat, may be having a hard time and weighed down with thoughts and emotions like they are in a pit they cannot climb out of. Most people’s first notion is how to get them out of the pit, and this is how our friends and family will usually react, and we are used to thinking of solutions and being fixers. I freely admit this is often my approach too.
This book says something different. Instead of being fixers, the volunteers are told to imagine climbing into the pit to sit alongside the person there and be with them, dropping all notions of solutions or results but just to listen and see what is going on (an approach which sounds a lot like Zazen). Sometimes, as a result of that, the pit can feel less deep to the caller, or the sides less steep, but not necessarily. Regardless, for as long as they want, they are not alone down there.
The image of being willing to climb into the pit with someone else reminds me of the bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha, known as Jizō in Japanese Buddhism. The name Kṣitigarbha literally means Bodhisattva of the Great Vow (Jp. Daigan Jizō Bosatsu) and he is said to be responsible for teaching the dharma to beings in all six realms of existence (the realms of gods, titans, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings). His responsibility for beings who find themselves in hell is particularly emphasised as, like the Samaritans volunteers, he is willing to climb down into the pit with others to bring them succour.
Some modern Buddhist teachers have compared the six realms to psychological states and whereas hell is usually associated with intense anger or hatred, it is easy to see how extreme despair could be viewed in a similar way as comprising a personal form of hell. We might not be able to pull someone out of that hell, but we can certainly join them there for a while.
As Jundo sometimes says, who are the hands and eyes of Kannon Bosatsu (Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva) if not you and I? Likewise, who else are the arms and ears of Jizō? When there is so much suffering in the world it is easy to be overwhelmed by how much needs fixing but perhaps we do not have to start there. I am sure that most of us have had sufficient experience of our own personal hells to be able to connect to others in their's and recognise that their suffering and ours is, in the end, 'not two'.
Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-
for positive poetry 優婆塞 台 婆
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