Understanding is Love's other name | Thich Nhat Hanh (short teaching video)

In the Buddhist tradition we speak of a person who has the capacity of listening to the people who suffer

and that person is named avalokitesvara

avalokitesvara means the one who is capable of listening

and we call that person the bodhisattva of deep listening of the bodhisattva of compassionate listening

and the capacity to listen deeply with compassion has to be cultivated

If you are a friend you should be able to listen to your friend with compassion and deeply

in order to be really a true friend. If you are a parent

and you should be able to listen with compassion and deeply with your child

and you should transform yourself into a bodhisattva of deep listening

cause without deep listening , without compassionate listening there will be no communication

and in many cases we live, we love we truly love and wish that the other person be happy

but we are not able to listen. Without the capacity to listening deeply we cannot understand and without

understanding love is not real, love is not possible

In the teaching of the Buddha, love is something that is born from the ground of understanding

You cannot love unless you understand, and this is so easy to understand.

a husband that doesn't understand his wife, how could he love her, a wife doesn't understand her husband

if she does not understand the difficulties, the despair, the hope of her husband, how could she love him?

that is why the practice of a wife is to listen deeply with compassion with no prejudices in order to understand her husband

If the father does not understand the son, the daughter, does not know what is

the kind of difficulties his son is undergoing and then how could that father love his son?

That is why it is so clear so simple to see that understanding is the ground of love

You cannot say that you love him or her unless you understand him or her

and understanding is not something that just happens like that

you have to practice looking deeply, you have to practice listening deeply

in order to really understand. You have to be able to let go of your ideas, your prejudices

you may already have an idea of how that person can be happy

and you want to impart the idea on him or her

and by doing so you make him or her suffer, even though you continue to believe that you love him or her

you may be very sincere

you may be, you might have a lot of love within yourself

but that is not love yet, that is the intention to love

that willingness to love and make one person happy is not love yet

In order to truly love you have to understand

and that is why if you love someone you should try to understand him or her deeply

understanding what? the kind of difficulties that that person has

the kind of suffering that that person has

within him self / her self

the kind of deep hope, deep desire, that the person has within himself/ herself

the kind of obstacles that person is encountering in his/her daily life, you have to see all of that

and if you don't see everything, how could you see everything? you can see a lot and not everything

you should ask him or her you should go and say darlin, "Do you think I understand you enough?"

and she will tell you/ he will tell you, if you ask with your, with all your heart

Darlin do you think I understand you enough, you can ask the question to your partner

to your father, to your mother, to your daughter, and if it is a real question

if it is a question that is asked with all your being, then that person will tell you and help you

to understand more and when you understand you will not continue to do or to say things that will

make him/her suffer. you will help him/her to overcome the difficulties and that is true love

true love comes from understanding

the compassionate line cannot be set up by the telephone company alone

you all have to pay something and they will set up a line

but that does not mean that you can communicate

telephone is everywhere, you can pick up one everywhere in your city

and yet with the telephone in your hand you cannot communicate

you have to be free of your views, your opinions your judgments, you have to be free of your prejudices

and then with the absences of prejudices and judgment

you have the opportunity to look deeply and to see reality in its self

the reality of the other person

because you declare that you love him, that you love her but you have not really understood him/her

you have to practice looking deeply by yourself and you can ask that person to help you understand

and that is the practice of love

you might think that it is the other person that you have not understood,

because the fact remains that you have not understood yourself, you do not know enough about yourself

you do not understand the nature of your own suffering, you have not understood the difficulties that you are going through

you do not understand the nature of your difficulties the root of your difficulties

and you desire, you are in a difficult situation and because you don't understand you own situation

and you don't understand yourself you continue to be caught in a situation and you don't even want to get out of that situation

there is a young nun of 19 who wrote to Thay the other day

and she told Thay about her life as a teenager

there is something very true in what she said.

she said Thay, when you are caught in a situation you might think that the situation is normal

and you don't see yourself in that situation and that is why you dont have the desire to get out of the situation

unless someone take you to a far away place and help you look back at your situation

and see that is not the situation you want it to be

and that is a kind of enlightenment. And if you don't have the desire to get out of the situation

you will never get out of it, that is why the first thing you do is have a desire to get out of the situation

you get the desire only by leaving that place and going to a far away place and look back and now you see that this is not a good situation

you and your beloved are caught because both of you suffer deeply every day

first of all there should be a desire to get out

and if you are the first one to get out you will be able to help rescue the other person and help the other person to taste the taste

of freedom and true love,

everyone of us has an idea of what happiness is

we are committed to that idea, and if i can not get this and that then happiness will not be possible

so you describe your happiness you have an idea of your happiness and you are striving to arrive at that

suppose a young person fall inlove with someone else and in her passion, attachment

she could not see more than that person, she said that that person is the only reason why she has to be alive

her reason that if she cannot marry that person then she rather she died because happiness

cannot be possible without that person beside her. and her idea is to get him or to die

for those of us who have not got into that situation we are able to see that happiness can come from every direction

happiness can come from the west, east, north, south, above, and below

and if we are committed to one idea of happiness we block all the other avenues, we drop all the venues

Happiness knocks on your door please open I am happiness, no you are not happiness and you refuse

every every opportunities to be happy

because you are already committed to one idea of happiness

and many young people commit suicide because they cannot marry the person they love

in the history of love there are plenty of things like that and those of use who are free

we see that happiness can come from every where at every moment.

the sunshine, the water can bring happiness. a half hour of walking leisurely can bring happiness, having a cup of tea

with a friend or teacher can bring happiness, happiness can be there every moment of our lives

why do we have to commit ourselves to just one idea of happiness.

this morning we spoke of joy and happiness born from the practice of releasing of letting go

can the first thing we have to let go of is our idea of happiness, if we are able to let go of our idea of happiness

if you are not happy it may be because you are holding very hard to your idea of happiness

happiness will come very easily.

and if your beloved one is not happy because you keep imposing your idea of happiness on him or her it is very clear very simple