​Oprah Winfrey Interviews Thich Nhat Hanh

"a copy of his Living Buddha/Living Christ never leaves my bedside."

                                               -- Oprah Winfrey
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Deep Listening:
Excerpt from the Interview

Nhat Hanh: Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don't interrupt. You don't argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing. 

Oprah: I love this idea of deep listening, because often when someone comes to you and wants to vent, it's so tempting to start giving advice. But if you allow the person just to let the feelings out, and then at another time come back with advice or comments, that person would experience a deeper healing. That's what you're saying. 

Nhat Hanh: Yes. Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in the other person and wrong perceptions in us. The other person has wrong perceptions about himself and about us. And we have wrong perceptions about ourselves and the other person. And that is the foundation for violence and conflict and war. The terrorists, they have the wrong perception. They believe that the other group is trying to destroy them as a religion, as a civilization. So they want to abolish us, to kill us before we can kill them. And the antiterrorist may think very much the same way—that these are terrorists and they are trying to eliminate us, so we have to eliminate them first. Both sides are motivated by fear, by anger, and by wrong perception. But wrong perceptions cannot be removed by guns and bombs. They should be removed by deep listening, compassionate listening, and loving space. 

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/5#ixzz2vBeNGbX5

@the Oprah Winfrey Network

@the Oprah Winfrey Network

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Connections with Process Theology

We are different at every moment.

The ancient doctrine that 'no one crosses the same river twice' is extended.  No thinker thinks twice; and, to put the matter more generally, no subject experiences twice.

-- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, page 29

Every moment is present in every other moment.

The principle of universal relativity directly traverses Aristotle’s dictum, “A substance is not present in a subject.” On the contrary, according to this principle, an actual entity is present in other actual entities.  In fact, if we allow for degrees of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity. The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear the notion of being present in another entity.

-- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, page 50

Love is gentle, kind, and non-violent.

It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds its purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world.

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343

Love is contagious.

In a process world, the quantum world, the connections between us are deep and mysterious and invisible, like sub-atomic particles that we cannot see but are nevertheless vibrating with a song that could be entitled "Be Kind to One Another."   Sadly, not enough people pick up on these vibrations that are the most real part of the universe.  People look at matter alone, the surface, the way we seem so disconnected and alone and in competition.   We fight and throw bombs and disfigure children for a cause....We often speak of hate as a contagion. Hate is like that, a disease that spreads quickly and disfigures and kills....But in that same universe where disease and hate can spread like a virus, so can kindness.  Kindness itself is a form of beauty, a beautiful contagion, one that the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead would say is the essence of the Soul of the World.  So, if you happen to be diagnosed with the contagion of kindness, be very careful: you might just be multiplying happiness in the world.

-- Patricia Adams Farmer, Kindness: The Beautiful Contagion

The self is made of non-self elements.

​Since I am a philosopher, let me tell you a great secret of life—a soul is not a thing, it is not something which stands untouched by the events of your life.  Your soul is the river of your life; it is the cumulative flow of your experience.  But what do we experience?  The world. Each other.  So your soul is the cumulative flow of all of your relationships with everything and everyone around you.  In a different image, we weave ourselves out of the threads of our relationships with everyone around us.

-- C. Robert Mesle, A Soul is Not a Thing

God is made of non-god elements.

Thich Nhat Hanh says that, when we really understand a flower, we know that the flower is composed on non-flower elements: the soil, the sunshine, the water, and nutrients that nourish it.  And when we really understand God, we know that God is composed of non-God elements, too, namely our own lives and feelings: indeed, the lives and feelings of all sentient beings on Earth and everywhere else in the universe. As God feels them, they become part of God's ongoing life, which means that we ourselves are part of God's ongoing life.  God helps create us by giving us fresh possibilities and our own innermost desire to realize them, and we help create God by giving God our feelings.

-- Jay McDaniel

Four Mantras:
​Excerpt from the Interview

Nhat Hanh: Yes, the collective energy is very helpful. I'd like to talk about the mantras you just mentioned. The first one is "Darling, I'm here for you." When you love someone, the best you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there? 

Oprah: That's a lovely mantra. 

Nhat Hanh: You look into their eyes and you say, "Darling, you know something? I'm here for you." You offer him or her your presence. You are not preoccupied with the past or the future; you are there for your beloved. The second mantra is, "Darling, I know you are there and I am so happy." Because you are fully there, you recognize the presence of your beloved as something very precious. You embrace your beloved with mindfulness. And he or she will bloom like a flower. To be loved means to be recognized as existing. And these two mantras can bring happiness right away, even if your beloved one is not there. You can use your telephone and practice the mantra. 

Oprah: Or e-mail. 

Nhat Hanh: E-mail. You don't have to practice it in Sanskrit or Tibetan—you can practice in English. 

Oprah: Darling, I'm here for you. 

Nhat Hanh: And I'm very happy. The third mantra is what you practice when your beloved one is suffering. "Darling, I know you're suffering. That is why I am here for you." Before you do something to help, your presence already can bring some relief. 

Oprah: The acknowledgment of the suffering or the hurting. 

Nhat Hanh: Yes. And the fourth mantra is a little bit more difficult. It is when you suffer and you believe that your suffering has been caused by your beloved. If someone else had done the same wrong to you, you would have suffered less. But this is the person you love the most, so you suffer deeply. You prefer to go to your room and close the door and suffer alone. 

Oprah: Yes. 

Nhat Hanh: You are hurt. And you want to punish him or her for having made you suffer. The mantra is to overcome that: "Darling, I suffer. I am trying my best to practice. Please help me." You go to him, you go to her, and practice that. And if you can bring yourself to say that mantra, you suffer less right away. Because you do not have that obstacle standing between you and the other person. 

Oprah: "Darling, I suffer. Please help me." 

Nhat Hanh: "Please help me." 

Oprah: What if he or she is not willing to help you? 

Nhat Hanh: First of all, when you love someone, you want to share everything with him or her. So it is your duty to say, "I suffer and I want you to know"—and he will, she will, appreciate it.

Oprah: If he or she loves you.

Nhat Hanh: Yes. This is the case of two people who love each other. Your beloved one.

Oprah: All right.

Nhat Hanh: "And when I have been trying my best to look deeply, to see whether this suffering comes from my wrong perception and I might be able to transform it, but in this case I cannot transform it, you should help me, darling. You should tell me why you have done such a thing to me, said such a thing to me." In that way, you have expressed your trust, your confidence. You don't want to punish anymore. And that is why you suffer less right away.

Read more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Thich-Nhat-Hanh/7#ixzz2vBf5XN93

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Connections with Process Theology

The world helps create God.

It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God...Thus the actuality of God must also be understood as a multiplicity of actual components in process of creation.

-- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348, 350

We live in a thoroughly miraculous world.

But I am a believer who is also convinced that more and more can be learned about the amazing capacities of the mind, the soul, and the spirit.  If their influence on the course of events is all considered “miraculous,” then the world we inhabit is thoroughly miraculous.  The events we are likely to call miracles are just the tip of the iceberg.  

-- John B. Cobb, Jr., Miracles

Love begins with deep listening.

​In a process world, our own experience is an act of feeling the presence of others and being causally affected by them.  As we feel their presence, their feelings become part of us, which means that we are partly composed of their feelings.  Sometimes we do this by imagination: we imagine what it is like to be inside their skin.  Sometimes we do this directly; in the immediacy of the presence we sense their moods. We can feel the suffering of others, the joys of others, the loves of others, the hatreds of others.  This is deep listening.

-- Jay McDaniel, see In the Beginning is the ListeningGod is Deep Listening.

God is Deep Listening.

​Deep Listening can be another name for the receptive and empathic side of God, the Soul of the world.  Whitehead speaks of this as the consequent nature of God, because it comes after, and is shaped by, the joys and sufferings of the world.  The idea is that there is in the very nature of the universe as deep and fathomless listening who, if given the chance, might well speak the four mantras recommended by Thich Nhat Hanh: Darling, I am here for you and Darling I know you are happy and I am happy with you and Darling I know you are sad and I am sad with you and Darling I suffer, please help me. These expressions express the spirit of Emmanuel, which literally means God with us.

-- Jay McDaniel

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