The people who get under your skin the most can in fact be your greatest teachers. It’s not a matter of overlooking differences, as is often taught, but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion—for those very differences offer a path to profound connection.
Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans—spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children—shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.
The people who get under your skin the most can in fact be your greatest teachers. It’s not a matter of overlooking differences, as is often taught, but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion—for those very differences offer a path to profound connection.
Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans—spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children—shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.
The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone
208
The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone
208Paperback
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Overview
The people who get under your skin the most can in fact be your greatest teachers. It’s not a matter of overlooking differences, as is often taught, but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion—for those very differences offer a path to profound connection.
Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans—spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children—shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611803785 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shambhala |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.20(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Zen of You & Me
A Guide for Getting Along with Just About Anyone
By Diane Musho Hamilton
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2017 Diane Musho HamiltonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61180-378-5
CHAPTER 1
SAME AND DIFFERENT
The mind of nirvana is easy to achieve. It is the mind of difference that is difficult to attain.
— ZEN MASTER MUMON
I was facilitating a workshop in Germany when an elegant woman, born in Africa and raised in Switzerland, began to share. She told the group the story of how her family fled to Europe when political instability overtook her country. She was only six years old when they left everything, braving their way north as homeless refugees. She had retained nothing from her early life, not even a memory. Everything was stripped. She started her life over in a completely strange land.
As a young girl, she was aware that she was different from the Swiss; her language, her style of dress, and the color of her skin set her apart. She sensed instinctively her differences were dangerous, and without being told, she strove to fit in. She felt especially vulnerable when other Africans drew attention to themselves or behaved in ways that were not acceptable in Swiss culture.
She wished they understood, like she did, that it was their obligation to blend in. She worked hard at finding her place in a foreign culture. Most importantly, she learned to dwell in what she called "the Universal," that aspect of human experience beyond differences: beyond skin color, nationality, and social status; beyond relative conditions altogether. Her recognition of this True Nature was obvious. She was a stunning presence and poignant beyond her words. Everyone in the room felt moved as she spoke.
Our true home is our spiritual nature, a place of safety and ultimate equality. From this original source, we have so much in common. We are all born into a great mystery. We breathe the same air, feel the warmth of the same sun on our skin, and look up at the same moon and stars at night. We strive to be happy in our own misguided ways, and we all experience challenge, suffering, and moments of despair. It has been said that "the tears of the red, yellow, black, brown, and white man are all the same." And in time, we will all die.
As humans, we may reside deeply together in being, but we are also exceptional in our ability to actively cooperate. The famous sociobiologist and Harvard professor E. O. Wilson says that we are one of the most convivial species on the planet, along with ants, termites, and bees. We have built megacities where ten, fifteen, or twenty million people live together. This is astounding. These are our own massive hills and hives, and we go about our business with every bit the same determination and cooperation as these insects do. With this extraordinary ability to live and work together, we thrive as a species.
Another profound commonality that we share is family and culture. Families provide a haven of intimacy and protection (as well as pain and neurosis). Their shared history, values, and activity are woven tightly together with their DNA. Culture creates another tight boundary of sameness around us. We associate with the people who look like us, talk like us, dress the same, and share our worldview. The sameness feels good and safe. We can relax with people like us and nod our head in agreement, erasing any lines between us. We relish harmony like this in our social circles. It feels good to be reflected by people who look like us, who think like us, who do the same things we do. We are stronger because we are the same. They say that in our evolutionary past, difference often equaled threat, but our tightly knit togetherness ensured safety and survival.
DIFFERENCE
In the German workshop, we had been exploring these forms of commonality through meditation, listening, and open communication practice. Then we switched to talking about our differences, braving a conversation about the refugee crisis in Europe. It was this conversation that prompted the woman from Switzerland to speak.
After telling us about her family's journey and the tremendous efforts she made to blend in, she went on to say that this conversation was the first time in her life she had spoken about her differences out loud: the challenges of being African in Europe, of being black where most people are white, and of having little money in a country with enormous wealth. It was a mind-stopping moment and hard to accept that she would feel so limited to speak up in a European democratic culture.
Her silence was probably not due to her differences, but the value judgments that are placed on them. It isn't simply that our skin is black or white; it is that one is considered better than the other. With the value difference of better and worse comes an array of disadvantages. Those disadvantages lead to injustice; that injustice hardens into oppression. There comes a point when we can no longer simply talk about our differences. We have to talk about our judgments, our emotional distress, our shared history of pain and oppression. A conversation that includes all of this is immensely challenging. So we avoid these conversations and, like our Swiss friend, just try to get along.
When the workshop was over, the memorable woman came up to me, squeezed my hand, and with deep sincerity in her eyes, thanked me for giving her the opportunity to speak. She said she felt an entirely new sensation in her body. She felt integrated and joyful in a way she had never experienced.
I didn't feel that she should thank me. I confessed to her that I struggle in my own way to learn to have real conversations about my differences with the people I live and work with. But I want to learn how to do it because I sense that I cannot be whole without including them; nor will I be complete without their taking me in. I know that only together can we address the cruelty and injustice in the world. So I ventured tentatively into talking about difference, and she helped me understand more than I did before our conversation. I believe that our capacity to acknowledge difference, to be willing to explore it, and to include diversity of opinions and styles within our relationships and communities is a sign of health and unity.
SAME AND DIFFERENT
Ultimately, as they say in Zen, "Everything [is] the same; everything [is] distinct." When it comes to humans, we are both alike and different. One day, when my son Willie and I were in New York City together on the subway, he looked around and said to me, "Everyone is different, and everyone looks just like their own parents."
Indeed, Willie is like me. He has my dark eyebrows, strong opinions, and sensitivity to the feelings of others. Then again, he is not like me. He has Down syndrome. He has one more chromosome than I do, and that tiny speck of a difference shows up in everything he does.
On the day he was born, I looked at the midwife, who had a concerned look on her face, and asked, "Is everything OK?"
She responded, "I am worried about how he looks."
I gazed into his tiny new face, saw the unusual fold in his eyes, and said aloud, "He has Down syndrome." Then I sank into a stunned abyss, a dark hole that felt infinite and eternal. I thought I would never return, that I would always be in this terrible difference that separated me from the simple joy that a new mother usually feels.
But in the few days after Willie's birth, I realized that in spite of the grief I felt, I was the still the same as other new mothers. My daily routines of feeding, changing diapers, and delighting in his new life captured my attention and offered me the sweet pleasure of attending to a newborn. I found refuge in all the ways I was the same as every other mother, from getting up to feed the baby when I was exhausted to enjoying the quietude of holding a baby in my arms and settling down at night. I soon realized that all mothers endure pain and fear for their child's future; I was not alone in that. Like them, I had hopes for my baby, and I knew there would be difficulties ahead.
Later on, my recognition of this profound sameness carried me through the times when Willie's differences did become difficult. Sometimes I struggled at school, sometimes in an encounter with a stranger, or sometimes with my own family because I was the only one who had a child with a disability and I felt the isolation of that. But Willie's unique perspective, his simple language, and way of expressing himself have been consistently enriching. And the immediacy of his affection and his sweetness is sometimes so pure as to be overwhelming. I am so profoundly touched by him — in the ways we are the same and the ways that we are different.
THE PRACTICE
1. Pick someone in your life that you are close to.
2. Make a short list of the ways you are the same.
3. Now reflect on several of your differences. Which differences give you pleasure and are easy to include in your relationship?
4. What are the differences between you that are difficult to work with?
CHAPTER 2TOGETHER, THEN APART
The truth is, we're better off apart, It just kills me to admit it.
— ANONYMOUS
I remember distinctly when I was about twelve, my best girlfriend — the one with whom I had spent every spare moment since I was about eight — and I started to disagree. Before that, we had worn the same kind of shoes, donned the same haircut, and outfitted ourselves in the same pleated skirts and navy blue windbreakers. We were all about our identification with each other. For us, seeming to be the same person was far more compelling than our distinctiveness.
Suddenly, right before we went into junior high school, our love of sameness began to change, and we started to quarrel about what we liked and didn't like. Where we used to go together shopping, looking at clothes we couldn't afford to buy and admiring them anyway, cooing like two doves over shapes and material, now each time one of us made a bid for agreement, the other hemmed, hawed, shrugged, and walked away.
An unexpected rift grew between us, soon it was a chasm, and before long we were living in entirely separate worlds. I didn't have even a hint at the time that this eruption of difference could be seen as healthy differentiation. All I knew was that our stream of togetherness had become rocky, and unable to clear the differences away, we drifted miles apart.
Studies in human development reveal that our focus on our similarities or differences changes throughout the course of our lives. In other words, we are caught in the tension between the relaxation of the status quo and the exciting encounter with difference. This contrast is a constant on the path toward greater awareness and growth.
A baby is swaddled in sameness with mommy, while a two-year-old shouts out his differences with an emphatic "No!" or "Mine," shaking his formidable toddler head. An adolescent's developmental task is similar, although a little more complicated. A healthy teenager moves from safe identification with parents and family, shifting his or her desire for sameness to his or her set of peers. The teenager feels strength and autonomy when butting heads over differences with the mother, but feels threatened and alone when he or she falls out with a friend on Facebook.
Belonging to one's group of friends is so important, but when they reject the teen, the family provides a warm blanket of togetherness again, comforting him or her in her moment of difference. These coming and goings are painful for teenagers, especially girls, but when a teen is supported properly by his or her family in the right amount, they help the teen to begin to integrate the warmth of communion and the chilly, but excellent, freedom of autonomy.
For some of us, as soon as we reach adulthood, our need for belonging and sameness becomes the predominant value. After exploring differences as an adolescent, we choose to settle in with our kind of people — securing family relationships, finding a steady group of friends who share our style and values, and making very few changes to our group, our church, or our world view after we leave home.
In these contexts, we work to keep differences down because they cause anxiety, especially within our close, protected circle. So we practice getting along, learning to accommodate, adapt, and participate in established social norms. We don't "rock the boat"; we "let sleeping dogs lie" and refuse to "stir the pot." True, we don't express our private opinions frequently, because harmony is our most important value.
There comes a time, however, when the rocky road of differentiation may beckon again. Something in us wants to grow and change. For example, we may discover that our sexual orientation is forbidden in the religion we grew up in, but we can no longer remain in denial about it. So we are forced to move on. Sometimes we leave with resentment, sometimes relief, or most often with a combination of both. If we suffer an accident or loss like a permanent injury after years of competitive sports, we may lose our friends who are athletes while we try to heal our body and reorganize our life purpose. Some of us find ourselves differentiating from old friends when a suitable marriage partner doesn't appear in the script or we don't have children when everyone else does. Things change, differences accrue, life moves on. And we move with it.
I have heard of soldiers who left the military when making war lost its meaning for them, or business execs who quit working when making money lost its meaning. It is not uncommon for a member of a close-knit spiritual community to end up at odds with the teacher. Or for a college student to sometimes have a falling out with a valued mentor. An unexpected exile like this can be incredibly disorientating and depressing, and for some people, it constitutes a dark night of the soul.
But periods of exile propel deep questioning, and it takes courage to move from the security of our sameness into new and different worlds. These are times when we have to go it alone, addressing our deepest question on its own rigorous terms. We may have to ask, "What has real meaning in my life?" Or "Who am I beyond family, community, or a mentor?" Or "What is my unique life purpose?"
This kind of truth seeking and the self-reliance that inevitably comes from it can disrupt the continuity of our life. On the other hand, authentic searching supports our distinctiveness, giving us permission to become truly who we are. We learn to speak our own truth and to stop habitually accommodating, blending in, or, worse, coping with people. As we deeply learn to recognize our differences as a valid part of our life, we will start to grant others theirs.
If we are able to work with the tension of difference, we become confident in our ability to discuss and integrate ways in which we are not the same. Difference is no longer translated as a problem to be rectified or a rejection, as in the moment when my young girlfriend and I turned on our heels, walking away from each other. Rather, it becomes interesting. Suddenly, we want to notice the differences: not to judge them as wrong so quickly, but to name and explore them. We are willing to engage in more difficult communications, exchanging points of view and navigating uneasy feelings. We are willing to take risks and make mistakes. We begin to develop a love for the flavor of difference and its enlivening and disrupting impact. Paradoxically, we are drawn to others who seek the same thing. Pretty soon, we are surrounded in the sameness with people who enjoy differences. Living more deeply within this paradox, we no longer seek exclusive identification with sameness or difference. We are neither a conformist nor a rebel, but appreciate the interplay of both in our lives.
We enjoy the natural boundary around our family, while loving the mix of in-laws at family occasions. We revel in the intensity of a World Cup match or a college football rivalry, but a defeat in the finals doesn't feel like losing to a conquering army. (Well, maybe it does, but not for as long). We may be perfectly happy to stop back into the church of our childhood, feeling at home in the prayers, hymns, and liturgy, but notice that we are free from exclusive identification with one religion. We are happy to belong, but we love the freedom and autonomy of being alone. We discover that our deepest nature is the unity that includes diversity.
There comes a time when we have delved into differences so deeply that our attitude toward them changes. We have to go farther than just recognizing our differences; we have to negotiate them, make compromises and agreements regarding them, but it is helpful to recognize first that they are legitimate and not wrong. Eventually, our attitude changes toward our conflicts when they come up. We begin to see conflicts as an exaggerated difference. They don't have to result in ongoing quarrels or estrangements. We may still feel threatened in moments — that never seems to go away — but we have the courage to work with them directly, trusting the innate intelligence of the struggle.
It is a very freeing experience to suddenly realize that a difference between us is not only OK — it is stimulating and worthwhile. This realization heightens our confidence to bring them out directly and openly. Once we do, we can learn how to navigate them more efficiently. There is less dread, less shame, and less blame. Instead of taking hours and days to talk something over, we can take only minutes to work out a snag because we have already created the grooves in our consciousness that accommodate difference. We aren't as threatened. Our body is not so reactive. So conversation is interesting and resolving problems is more efficient. The next question becomes how we can bring this kind of light heart and light foot into our social action in the world. This is a question worth living. Finding this kind of ease in our personal lives is the first step.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Zen of You & Me by Diane Musho Hamilton. Copyright © 2017 Diane Musho Hamilton. Excerpted by permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
1 Same and Different 1
2 Together, Then Apart 9
3 The Ego Divides 17
4 Mindfulness and Meditation 28
5 Listening: The Supreme Skill 39
6 Expressing Our Uniqueness 49
7 Depth of Feeling 62
8 Talking About Difference: Five Steps 71
9 Negotiating with David 81
10 The Great Divide: Conflict 91
11 Differences in Style 99
12 You and Me, Us and Them 113
13 Free from Identity 130
14 Natural Compassion 143
15 Practice Is the Way 156
16 Taking Heart 166
17 Not One, Not Two 173
Epilogue 184
Notes 187