Below is the lord Buddha teaching to his son;
“Rahula,
Practise loving kindness to overcome anger. Loving kindness has the capacity to bring happiness to others without demanding anything in return.
Practise compassion to overcome cruelty. Compassion has the ability to remove the suffering of others without anything in return.
Practise selfless joy to overcome hatred. Selfless joy arises when one rejoices over the happiness of others and wishes the well-being and success of others.
Practise equanimity to overcome prejudice. Equanimity is the way of looking things with an open and calm mind. This is because that is. Do not do to others what you will not do to yourself. Do not reject one thing only to chase after another.
I call these the four immeasurables. Practise them and you will become a refreshing source of vitality and happiness for others.”
(The passage above was extracted from the book “Old Path White Clouds” by Thich Nhat Hahn.)
I would not feel such remorse if I have learnt this teaching earlier.
Below is a true story that happened some years back between me and my friend, L
L and I were best friends during our school days. I would do anything for him. As L was not from a well-to-do family, he would always borrow money from me. As he was my best friend, I would lend it to him without much hesitation. Things got worst as we grew older. From the usual four Ringgit each week, he started asking for more than ten ringgit. This change turned into a burden for me being a student, so I told him one day that I was not able to lend him so much money regularly. I was given a rude shock – like a slap on my face – as he started swearing at me using Hokkien. After that episode, starting from that day, he ignored me as if I were a stranger. I got furious with him and all I cared about was to get my sweet revenge. I started to spread dreadful rumours about him to our friends, expecting him to apologise to me for what he did. Instead, he did the otherwise. He started to do the same to me, ending our friendship and turning our relationship into severe enmity.
Several years has passed since the incident. Now, I feel shame and sorrow whenever I recall the fight.
If this were to happen now, I am very confident that I would be able to solve it with a more effective way: Applying the four immeasurables which is loving kindness, compassion, selfless joy and equanimity in dealing with these conflicts.
IF this were to happen now:
I would use loving kindness to overcome my anger towards him. Without the anger I would be able to think more wisely and maybe I would act differently. With compassion, my cruelty towards him would be overcome and thus I would not spread dreadful rumours about him. Thus our relationship can still be maintained. With selfless joy, hatred could be overcome and thus I would forgive him and things will turn out differently. With equanimity, prejudices would be overcome and I would be able to judge things more wisely.
Although conflicts are unavoidable, this practice could help to minimize the effect of the conflict and thus a precious relationship could be maintained.
After applying this teaching in my life, the relationships between me and the people around me have improved. This made me believe that it helps in resolving interpersonal conflicts.
Do you think I can mend this friendship? If you were in my position, what would you do to turn the relationship around?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Effective Communication Skills - Common Interest as a tool!!!
“I DON’T HAVE FRIENDS”...
This was what I always said when I was in high school, though in fact I did have a lot of good friends. However, without knowing the reasons I would always feel lonely and sad as if I were the layer of oil on water which could not mix well with all of my friends.
Why can’t I mix well with them? Why do I always feel that I am an outcast? These types of questions were always in my mind until I read an article about effective communication. This article made me realize that my problem lies in my COMMUNICATION skills.
Therefore, from that day onwards I tried to change and develop some effective communication skills according to what I had read from that article.
From that article, I learnt that games can be a good way to overcome social discomfort and shyness which are the main obstacles to effective communications. Thus I learned to play a traditional Chinese game ,Mahjong which is also my friends’ favorite games. After learning and playing Mahjong I found that I am more ready to interact with my friends. Through this method, the relationship between me and my friends have been enhanced as I can communicate better with them without feeling shy and discomfort. Eventually we have had more topics to talk about and this made me happier.
Thus, after this I gain a conclusion that developing EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS are important in our daily life as life is all about relationships. Struggling with relationship be it with friends, family, schoolmates, etc can be something tiring. Hence by learning effective communication skills, life would be easier as relationship between people can be something interesting if we know how to communicate effectively.
Hence, when I saw the description of this module through the CORS website I was actually quite happy as I know this would be a good chance for me to learn more about effective communication skills. Since I am from a Chinese speaking family, I am also quite worried. Speaking fluently and confidently in English in fact is a difficult task for me but this is the reality that I have to face and overcome. Therefore I really hope that through this module I can communicate effectively with everyone around me and I can speak in English fluently and confidently.
This was what I always said when I was in high school, though in fact I did have a lot of good friends. However, without knowing the reasons I would always feel lonely and sad as if I were the layer of oil on water which could not mix well with all of my friends.
Why can’t I mix well with them? Why do I always feel that I am an outcast? These types of questions were always in my mind until I read an article about effective communication. This article made me realize that my problem lies in my COMMUNICATION skills.
Therefore, from that day onwards I tried to change and develop some effective communication skills according to what I had read from that article.
From that article, I learnt that games can be a good way to overcome social discomfort and shyness which are the main obstacles to effective communications. Thus I learned to play a traditional Chinese game ,Mahjong which is also my friends’ favorite games. After learning and playing Mahjong I found that I am more ready to interact with my friends. Through this method, the relationship between me and my friends have been enhanced as I can communicate better with them without feeling shy and discomfort. Eventually we have had more topics to talk about and this made me happier.
Thus, after this I gain a conclusion that developing EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS are important in our daily life as life is all about relationships. Struggling with relationship be it with friends, family, schoolmates, etc can be something tiring. Hence by learning effective communication skills, life would be easier as relationship between people can be something interesting if we know how to communicate effectively.
Hence, when I saw the description of this module through the CORS website I was actually quite happy as I know this would be a good chance for me to learn more about effective communication skills. Since I am from a Chinese speaking family, I am also quite worried. Speaking fluently and confidently in English in fact is a difficult task for me but this is the reality that I have to face and overcome. Therefore I really hope that through this module I can communicate effectively with everyone around me and I can speak in English fluently and confidently.
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