Care & Understanding

By Thich Nhat Hahn

When you plant lettuce,

if it does not grow well,

you don’t blame the lettuce.

You look into the

reasons it is not doing well.

It may need fertilizer,

or more water,

or less sun.

You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems

with our friends

or our family,

we blame the other person.

But if we know

how to take care of them,

they will grow well,

like lettuce.

Blaming has

no positive effect at all,

nor does trying to persuade

using reason and arguments.

That is my experience.

No blame,

no reasoning,

no argument,

just understanding.

If you understand,

and you show

that you understand,

you can love,

and the situation will change.

The Main Force of Separation Is Fear.

~by Adyashanti

The experience of separation, although it is illusory, it seems to be a natural stage in the development of consciousness. I even see this sort of ego development with it that comes a sense of separation. It all has to do with how our brain works and the immense power that thought has and it all sort of starts to create this sense of self and so I see that sense of separate self as ultimately illusory but actual quite natural stage of development, but then I think that when you get to the threshold, which I think is where a lot of people are now; they've experienced that separateness and they find that it's inherently unsatisfactory, not only for oneself, but very unsatisfactory for the world, very unhealthy for the world. 


And then you feel that pull, right, there's something else, but that's when you often start to uncover this tremendous fear, because it's a sort of death. Moving beyond the separate self it's a death of an identity. And, on the level of thought, it's like, it's a death, it's very abstract to talk about it or describe it, but when it starts to happen to you, and you literally feel like you're going to die or you look in and you see the emptiness of the separate self, and it sounds very spiritual, but when you actually see it, it can really be quite terrifying, quite shocking. 

Watch the Video

The Nature of Things ~ Thich Nhat Hanh (video)