summary
Wise engagement begins with caring for yourself through patient and patient care. Maintaining your difficult feelings is a wise form of involvement that changes how you relate to your pain. By being wisely involved in the truth that everything changes, we can help to give more wisdom and clarity to our actions and benefit others.
What should you do when you feel helpless, hostile, or infuriated? Maybe your spouse has betrayed your trust, your friend criticized you behind your back, or your child refused to listen. Or, like many of us today, you are heartbroken and angry at the actions of a political leader, a business, or a government.
You are not morally wrong, and you are not a bad person to feel your way, but your feelings are not hurting the people who are causing harm. They’re hurting you. They cloud your mind, make your mind constricting, making it difficult to act with wisdom, and now they need the world so badly.
That’s why it’s essential to take care of yourself. Not by checking or pretending to be things, but by meeting pain with loving attention, patience and kindness. This is a profound, deeply wise choice to relate to suffering without burning the fire of anger, despair, or responsibility.
Choice of existence and acceptance
Taking care of your difficult emotions means that they will continue to exist in your body, mind, and mind, even when it is painful. You may place your hands on your heart or stomach and focus your attention on the sensations, thoughts and energy that arise within you. You can say gently to yourself, “I’m here for you.” Or you can use the powerful words of Nhat Hanh. This simple act of approval softens the edges of emotional pain. You are not trying to get rid of it – you are learning to relate to it with open, understanding, and kindness. That is the beginning of healing and the way wisdom is born.
You are learning to relate to emotional pain with openness, understanding and kindness. That is the beginning of healing and the way wisdom is born.
It can also be caused by metta or something with affection. In Buddhist traditions, this quality is sometimes translated as “non-hatred.” When you are injured or upset by people or policies, you may not be able to wish them well. But you can choose not to want them to be ill. Non-hate does not mean recognizing harm. It means that maliciousness and aggression will not be rooted in your own mind. It is the wisdom to protect yourself from the corrosive effects of hostility and maliciousness while taking meaningful actions.
Non-fatal includes your own pain and compassion for those who are suffering. It is rooted in the realization that it maintains the judgment of a cloud of anger, causes deep inner pain, and often leads to act in ways that perpetuate harm rather than stop it. By choosing non-abelism, you can respond with stability, strength and clarity rather than correspondence.
By choosing non-abelism, you can respond with stability, strength and clarity rather than correspondence.
Contrary to the current cultural message, responding in this way is not a weakness. It is strength guided by wisdom. It means stopping harm as much as we can, but we do it with an uninterrupted heart and caring heart.
Take comfort in change
You can also ground yourself and be upset by the truth of change.
Nothing exists isolated and will not remain the same forever. Even simple wooden tables are the result of countless factors: wood, soil, weather, timber mills, delivery systems, artisans and more. Each of these conditions has its own reasons.
The same applies to suffering. Personal, cultural, and global. Everything is harmful or broken due to certain conditions. That’s good news, as you can change the results if you can change the conditions.
Anything harmful or broken exists for certain conditions. If you can change the conditions, you can change the results.
That’s why your actions are important. What you think, say, and do shape the world. Even small acts motivated by wisdom, compassion, and non-hurring contribute to the necessary conditions for unity, generosity and harmony. They are much more effective when your behavior arises from stability and goodwill rather than responsiveness. A calm, clear, courageous response doesn’t just make you feel better.
You may not be able to control other people’s actions or the situation in the world, but you can choose to respond constantly with wisdom and clarity.
You start by looking towards your pain with openness and kindness. After that, you cultivate a practice of non-abhorrence. And finally, you promise to use your thoughts, words and actions to contribute to conditions that will bring benefits and avoid causing harm. You choose to participate in the creation of a more just, generous and loving world for yourself, your friends, family and all living creatures.
