Zen And The Art Of Dealing With Difficult People

4.7

10-Tage-Kurs

Zen And The Art Of Dealing With Difficult People

Von Mark Westmoquette

Was du lernen wirst

This is a course that will help you deal with difficult people, and help you see those difficult people as your best teachers - what we call in Zen 'troublesome buddhas'. When we change our attitude from one of trying to avoid difficult people to one of seeing them as teachers, then can show you where you can grow and act with greater wisdom, compassion and kindness. This course is for anyone wanting to learn how to respond to difficult people and situations with more clarity and wisdom. You might be someone who has a number of troublesome people in various quarters of your life, or perhaps you have one particularly enraging one, or you have brushed up against an array of them at different points in your life. You can see that there’s often a pattern to your behaviour in relation to them and it usually causes pain – perhaps a great deal of pain. The only way we can grow is by facing this pain, acknowledging how we feel and how we’ve reacted, and making a commitment to end this repeating pattern of suffering. I assume no previous experience with mindfulness or Zen (or indeed any kind of Buddhism), and by no means do you need to identify as a Buddhist or adhere to any beliefs. In part 1 we'll explore what a troublesome Buddha is and what it means to start learning from the difficult people in our lives. Then in part 2, we'll explore how our particular tendencies and habitual behaviours contribute to the difficulty of certain relationships - for example, one person might get angry, while another person may react very apologetically. In part 3, I introduce what I'd see as the first key skill to develop - awareness of body sensations and the importance of maintaining emotional regulation, and in part 4 I guide a body scan meditation practice. Part 5 is about the second key skill: considering the possibility that you may not always be in the right. In part 6 I guide a meditation on being with discomfort in the body, since our ability to be ok with discomfort as the emotional heat rises is very important. Part 7 is all about trying out new ways of behaving, and I guide a meditation on a Zen koan about dealing with conflict in part 8. Part 9 is about the subject of opinions, how they can contribute to the difficulty in our relationships and how we can learn to hold them more lightly. And in part 10, we explore shifting from a perspective of seeing ourselves and others as separate to one of connection and integration, where we might see everyone (including our difficult people) as just facets in one giant jewel.

Mark Westmoquette

London, England, United Kingdom

Mark has been practising Zen Buddhism for over 15 years under the guidance of Daizan Skinner Roshi, and is authorised as a senior Zen teacher. He is the author of ‘Zen and the Art of Dealing With Difficult People’ (Watkins, 2021) and runs a podcast to go with the book called ‘Zen At The Sharp End’. The lessons in this course derive from the book,...

Lektion 1

What Is A Troublesome Buddha?

This course is centred around exploring the Zen phrase 'a troublesome buddha'. A troublesome buddha is someone you find difficult but can teach us about ourselves and how we relate to others. In this first part of the course, we explore how we can apply our meditation practice in those situations where we encounter difficult people - people that irritate, frustrate or anger us, when things get emotionally charged and we often find we react impulsively. Seeing difficult people as troublesome buddhas is about changing our perspective from one of trying to ignore or avoid those difficult situations to one of seeing troublesome people as people we can learn from, and those encounters with them as opportunities to learn something about ourselves.

Lektion 2

Tendencies And Habits

What we find difficult about people – and how we respond to them – can often stem from old and deeply grooved patterns within our attitudes and behaviour, which are really all about how we move away from or avoid feelings of discomfort. These patterns and tendencies arise because of our past experiences and upbringing – what in Buddhism is called our past conditioning. In this second lesson we explore one of the main areas that encounters with difficult people can teach us about ourselves - our own habitual behaviours and impulsive reaction style. According to the Buddha, craving, aversion and delusion are the three underlying causes of suffering, so we can categorise our default patterns along these lines. The main point of this lesson is that it’s never too late to carve new grooves and start shifting your attitude towards difficult people - we absolutely can change our behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. The rest of this course will be about how to make those changes.

Lektion 3

Key Skill #1: Awareness Of Sensations

When the emotional temperature rises, it gets harder and harder to stay consciously aware of your sensations and remain able to choose how you respond. We become what's known as 'emotionally dysregulated', meaning that our habitual reactions take over and we fall back into the well-trodden grooves, habits and ways of reacting that we discussed in the previous video. Therefore, in my view, the first key skill we need to develop when it comes to dealing with difficult people and situations is remaining aware of our sensations. However, it's one thing saying it and it's another thing doing it. The stronger the emotional charge, the harder it becomes – which is why we need to practice regularly under easy conditions with low emotional charge. Awareness of our sensations gives us conscious knowledge of how the body is responding to the difficult relationship, and this knowledge allows us to choose how we respond - rather than just fall into our usual habitual reactions.

Lektion 4

Guided Body Scan Meditation

This is a simple guided body scan meditation to help you become more familiar with your internal landscape and practice becoming aware of your sensations and feelings in a quiet, emotionally calm environment.

Lektion 5

Key Skill #2: Considering You May Not Be Right

In my view, the second key skill to develop in our difficult relationships is having the willingness to entertain, even the possibility, that you may not be right. Considering you might not be in the right comes down to intention - do you really want to learn about yourself? - do you really want to see the truth of the situation? - do you really want to be more wise and compassionate in your relationships? When looking within with honesty and acceptance, you may very well uncover a sense of resistance or unwillingness to face just how you’re feeling, especially if the feelings are unpleasant, e.g. embarrassment, regret or shame. This is where it's essential we develop a capacity to be ok with feeling discomfort or pain so we can face these emotions and learn from them. Considering that you may not be right equates to a willingness to try and see it from their side. And as we do that, we start to see beyond the behaviour to the person behind it and see that the difficult relationship takes place in the space in between, not solely in the other person.

Lektion 6

Guided Meditation On Being With Discomfort In The Body

In this meditation, I'll invite you to become aware of areas of discomfort or pain in your body and notice them for what they are - putting aside any critical, judgemental thoughts, and having a willingness to look with openness & honesty. This is a practice - a practice for real life. If we can learn to be with discomfort in the safe space of our meditation, and with ourselves, then over time that skill will spill out into our daily life and relationships.

Lektion 7

Trying Out New Ways Of Behaving

Difficult relationships are uncomfortable and oftentimes painful. Thus, in learning to deal with the difficulty, it's first important to acknowledge the hard-wired human tendency of wanting to move away from pain, and second to learn to tolerate that discomfort or pain. For example, if you feel your blood boil, it’s really important to notice and acknowledge that your blood is boiling, rather than just ignore it or distract yourself. Once we can do that, we can start to work with the difficult feelings and start to bring more self-compassion and forgiveness to the situation. It's also important to recognise there is no ‘correct’ response to any given situation. Sometimes it's important to step back from the situation, sometimes patience and tolerance is what's needed, sometimes you must assert your boundaries. We now know what our default tendencies and habits are when faced with a difficult person, but as we become more aware of what's really happening, we can start to experiment with new ways of behaving that may be wiser and more compassionate.

Lektion 8

Guided Meditation On A Zen Koan

In this meditation we explore the Zen koan of 'Nansen cuts the cat in two'. A koan is a question or vignette that points us towards finding a perspective of non-separation or non-duality. This koan is all about how to deal with conflict. The koan goes: Once the monks of the Western and Eastern Halls were arguing about a cat. Nansen, holding up the cat, said, “You monks! If you can say a word of Zen, I will spare the cat. Otherwise I will kill it.” No one could answer, so Nansen cut the cat in two. That evening, when Joshu returned, Nansen told him of the incident. Joshu thereupon took off his sandal, put it on his head, and walked off. Nansen said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been saved!”

Lektion 9

Letting Go Of Opinions

Opinions are views, judgements or assessments formed in the mind about a particular matter, stored as a kind of shorthand so we don't have to continually reassess everything. That means opinions are necessarily predetermined and cannot relate to what is here and now. Opinions become troublesome when we lose sight of the fact that our opinions are just opinions - we become blinkered and stop being open to other angles and perspectives. We 'identify' with them by conflating the opinion with our sense of self. Some opinions are can be helpful, but we have to stay vigilant of even the helpful views in case they solidify into blind beliefs. The Buddha taught that clinging to one’s view of things only acts to confine us and leads to suffering, conflict and potentially very troublesome relationships. Dealing with troublesome opinions involves examining how we relate to them. We can explore the nature of change or impermanence when it comes to our opinions, and ask whether there is there a sense of fluidity with them. How willing are we to update our view when new information comes along?

Lektion 10

Seeing Their Buddha Nature

A helpful metaphor when it comes to thinking about yourself in relation to your difficult people is that of a mountain range. When it's enveloped in cloud, you only see the mountain peaks. This represents our conventional perspective, where we perceive everyone as separate and distinct, and is the world of duality and discrimination. Discrimination is important, but it comes with a price because we think “I am different from you”. Imagine now, in the mountain-range metaphor, that the clouds clear away revealing the valleys that connect all the different mountaintops in one mountain range. This represents the understanding that you and I are not as separate as may seem. In Zen is referred to as our seeing our buddha nature. Shunning our troublesome people or getting angry with them arises from the perspective of separation or duality - that “I am different from you”. However, from the non-separate, non-dual perspective, we see the wisdom of being compassionate and having patience and tolerance toward our difficult people. This isn’t easy - that's why we practice all the things we've mentioned so far: stillness, awareness, reflection, deep listening, and most of all establishing our intention to want to learn about ourselves and how to become wiser in our relationships.

Neueste Bewertungen

4.71

Anne

October 13, 2023

Interesting course. Lots of good advice and exercises

Nada

October 11, 2023

Thank you Mark this was amazing course I took my time between the lessons I learn a lot. We all have those difficult people in our life understand it helps me better. Till next time take care 👏👏🤗🌻✍️Nada 🍀

KatieG

September 7, 2023

A lovely course, weaving together ideas with practical tips and Mark’s personal touch inc a bit of humor to lighten what could be a heavy topic! I’d already discovered in my own life that some of the hardest folks for me to deal with are my best teachers-but yet found the course to be a valuable addition to deepen that understanding AND appreciate...

Diane

September 5, 2023

Thank you so much for putting together this wonderful course Mark ! I’ve had so many take aways from the simplicity of your analogy with some of the very complex issues I have with my daughter . I will refer often as it’s certainly will always be in my tool box to allow myself to maintain my inner peace without reacting/ clinging to the usual...

Anne

August 31, 2023

Thank you. I learned a lot. Relationships are very tricky.

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