Tell Me What Is In Your Heart

“I know a Catholic woman who lives in North America. She suffered very much because she and her husband had a very difficult relationship. They were a well-educated family; they both had doctorate degrees. Yet the husband suffered so much. He was at war with his wife and all of his children. He could not talk to his wife or to his children. Everyone in the family tried to avoid him, because he was like a bomb ready to explode. His anger was enormous. He believed that his wife and his children despised him, because no one wanted to come near him. In fact, his wife did not despise him. His children did not despise him. They were afraid of him. To be close to him was dangerous because he could explode at any time.

One day the wife wanted to kill herself because she could not bear it any longer. She felt she was not able to continue living under these circumstances. But before she committed suicide, she called her friend who was a Buddhist practitioner to let her know what she was planning to do. The Buddhist friend had invited her several times to practice meditation in order to suffer less, but she had always refused. She explained that, as a Catholic, she could not practice or follow Buddhist teachings. That afternoon, when the Buddhist woman learned that her friend was going to kill herself, she said over the telephone,

“You claim to be my friend, and now you are about to die. The only thing I ask of you is to listen to the talk of my teacher, but you refuse. If you are really my friend, then please, take a taxi and come listen to the tape, and after that you can die.”

When the Catholic woman arrived, her friend let her sit alone in the living room and listen to a dharma talk on restoring communication. During the hour or hour and a half that she listened to the dharma talk, she went through a very deep transformation within herself. She found out many things. She realized that she was partly responsible for her own suffering, and that she had also made her husband suffer a lot. She realized that she had not been able to help him at all. In fact, she had made his suffering heavier and heavier each day because she avoided him. She learned from the dharma talk that in order to help the other person, she should be able to listen deeply with compassion. That was something she had not been able to do in the last five years.

After listening to the dharma talk, the woman felt very inspired. She wanted to go home and practice deep listening in order to help her husband. But her Buddhist friend said, “No my friend, you should not do it today because compassionate listening is a very deep teaching. You have to train yourself for at least one or two weeks in order to be able to listen like a Bodhisattva.” So the woman invited her Catholic friend to attend a retreat in order to learn more. There were four hundred and fifty people participating in the retreat—eating, sleeping, and practicing together for six days. During that time, all of us practiced mindful breathing, aware of our in-breath and out-breath to bring our body and mind together. We practiced mindful walking, investing one hundred percent of ourselves in each step. We practiced mindful breathing, walking, and sitting in order to observe and embrace the suffering within us. Not only did the participants listen to the dharma talks, but all of us practiced the art of listening to each other, and of using loving speech. We tried to listen deeply in order to understand the suffering of the other person.

The Catholic woman practiced very seriously, very deeply, because for her, this was a matter of life or death. When she returned home after the retreat, she was very calm, and her heart was full of compassion. She really wanted to help her husband to remove the bomb within his heart. She moved very slowly and followed her breathing to keep calm and nourish her compassion. She practiced walking mindfully, and her husband noticed that she was different. Finally, she came close and sat quietly next to him, something that she had never done in the last five years. She was silent for a long time, maybe ten minutes. Then she gently put her hand on his and said,

“My dear, I know you have suffered a lot during the last five years and I am very sorry. I know that I am greatly responsible for your suffering. Not only have I been unable to help you suffer less, but I have made the situation much worse. I have made many mistakes and caused you a great deal of pain. I am extremely sorry. I would like you to give me a chance to begin anew. I want to make you happy, but I have not known how to do it; that is why I have made the situation worse and worse every day. I don’t want to continue like this anymore. So my darling, please help me. I need your help in order to understand you better, in order to love you better. Please tell me what is in your heart. I know you suffer a lot, I must know your suffering so that I will not do the wrong things again and again as in the past. Without you, I cannot do it. I need you to help me so that I will not continue to hurt you. I want only to love you.”

When she spoke to him like this, he began to cry. He cried like a little boy. For a long time, his wife had been very sour. She always shouted and her speech had been full of anger, bitterness, blaming, and judging. They had only argued with each other. She had not spoken to him like this in years, with so much love and tenderness. When she saw her husband crying, she knew that now she had a chance. The door of her husband’s heart had been closed, but now it was beginning to open again. She knew that she had to be very careful, so she continued her practice of mindful breathing. She said, “Please my dear, please tell me what is in your heart. I want to learn to do better so that I won’t continue to make mistakes.” The wife is also an intellectual, she has a Ph.D. degree like her husband, but they suffered because neither of them knew how to practice listening to each other with compassion. But that night she was wonderful, she practiced compassionate listening successfully. It turned out to be a very healing night for both of them. After only a few hours together, they were able to reconcile with each other.

If the practice is correct, if the practice is good, you don’t need five or ten years, just a few hours may be enough to produce transformation and healing. I know that the Catholic woman was very successful that night, because she was able to convince her husband to sign up for a second retreat. The second retreat lasted six days and at the end of the retreat, her husband also experienced a great transformation. During a tea meditation, he introduced his wife to the other retreatants. He said,

“My dear friends, my dear co-practitioners, I would like to introduce to you a Bodhisattva, a Great Being. She is my wife, a great Bodhisattva. During the last five years, I have made her suffer so much, I have been so stupid. But, through her practice, she has changed everything. She has saved my life.” After that they told their story and how they came to the retreat. They shared how they were able to reconcile on a deep level and renew their love.

When a farmer uses a kind of fertilizer that does not have any effect, he has to change the fertilizer. The same is true for us. If, after several months, the practice we are doing has not brought about any transformation and healing, we have to reconsider the situation. We must change our approach and learn more in order to find the right practice that can transform our life and the lives of the people we love. All of us can do the same if we receive and learn the right teaching and the right practice. If you practice very seriously, if you make the practice a matter of life and death, like the Catholic woman, you can change everything.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Anger

“When we are angry, our anger is our very self.  To suppress or chase it away is to suppress or chase away our self.  When we are joyful, we are the joy.  When we are angry, we are the anger.  When anger is born in us, we can be aware that anger is an energy in us, and we can accept that energy in order to transform it into another kind of energy.

When we have a compost bin filled with organic material which is decomposing and smelly, we know that we can transform the waste into beautiful flowers.  At first, we may see the compost and the flowers as opposite, but when we look deeply, we see that the flowers already exist in the compost, and the compost already exists in the flowers.  It only takes a couple of weeks for a flower to decompose.  When a good organic gardener looks into her compost, she can see that, and she does not feel sad or disgusted.  Instead, she values the rotting material and does not discriminate against it.  It takes only a few months for compost to give birth to flowers.

We need the insight and non-dual vision of the organic gardener with regard to our anger.  We need not be afraid of it or reject it.  We know that anger can be a kind of compost, and that it is within its power to give birth to something beautiful.  We need anger in the way the organic gardener needs compost.  If we know how to accept our anger, we already have some peace and joy.  Gradually we can transform anger completely into peace, love, and understanding.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is every Step