Harmony

Close your eyes and be aware of your breath. Notice when it’s coming in, when it’s going out. Where do you feel it most clearly in the body? Focus your attention there and ask yourself if long breathing is good. Try some long breathing for a while. If it doesn’t feel good, then you can try shorter breathing—faster, slower; heavier, lighter; deeper, more shallow. Experiment to see what kind of breathing feels good for the body right now.

You want to get grounded here in the present moment because this is where you’re going to understand your own mind. It’s a good place to rest, also, to get yourself out of the affairs of the day and think a little bit more objectively about how you run your life, in general. It’s good to take stock every now and then about how your life is going, based on your actions. What are you doing? What are the results you’re getting? Think about some of the principles that lead to a happy life.

One of them is learning how to get along with one another. There was a lay person named Hatthaka, whose friends told the Buddha, “He has a large following because he knows how to treat his following well.” And the Buddha said he knew that. He’d also taught Hatthaka how to lead his following well. There were four principles that he recommended, and they’re good to reflect on when you think about how you get along in the family, how you get along at work—what might be done to change or improve things.

The first is that you’re generous. Any relationship where you’re just taking, taking, taking all the time is not going to last. You have to learn how to give as well. This may not involve just material things, but also giving your time, giving your concern, giving your energy. Give your knowledge. Give your forgiveness. You would think forgiveness would be easy to give because it doesn’t cost any money, but often it’s the hardest because there’s so much tied up in our own minds about how we feel we’ve been wronged by somebody, how it was not right, and how something has to be done to correct the situation.

But forgiveness doesn’t mean that you’re going to like the person, or you’re going to forget what the person did. It simply means you’re not going to go for revenge. You’re not going to do anything to get back at that person. That way, you get out of the karmic mud-slinging battle that’s been going on for who knows how many lifetimes.

Sometimes, when somebody does something to you, you may have done something to that person in a past lifetime. And they may have done something to you. And it goes back-and-forth, back-and-forth, way back, until you forget who was who. The story becomes a lot less interesting. That’s the attitude you should have. So you learn how to be generous with your forgiveness.

The second quality is that you speak with kind words. When the time comes to criticize somebody, you try to find the right time, the right place, so that they’ll be willing to accept your criticism, to listen to it fairly and not put up barriers. You’ve got to show respect.

One of the worst things for any relationship, either at home or in the workplace, is contempt. You don’t want to show any contempt for anybody else. You remember that everybody is working hard; everybody is suffering. So have some compassion. And have some thought about what you want to say and how you’re going to say it—not just because you want to say it. Ask how you’re going to say it so that it will actually be received. That’s what criticism should be for, not just sounding off. It should be so that the other person understands what he or she has done wrong and will be willing to change. You’d like people to criticize you in this way because you learn. Well, try giving criticism in that way as well.

The third quality is that when you give help to someone else, it’s genuine help. You see what they really need. You’re not just going for brownie points; you’re not just going to score points in the relationship. You think about what the other person really needs. That kind of help goes to the heart, fastens the bonds of friendship even more securely.

And finally, consistency. What this means is that you treat people consistently with their relationship to you. Your father should be treated like a father. Your mother should be treated like a mother. The people who work under you should be treated as members of your place, not just expendable labor. In other words, you think about the relationship you have going and the relationship you want to maintain. How do you behave in a way that’s consistent with that?

This way, when you keep these four principles in mind as you go through the day—generosity, kind words, genuine help, and consistency—then you find that life goes a lot easier. The relationships you’ve begun get stronger. You can work together with a lot more peace and a lot more harmony. In this way, you contribute to the harmony of the world.

We live in a world that’s so disharmonious right now. It’s good for us to try to bring as much harmony as we can into our lives through our thoughts, through our words, through our deeds. So when you’re meditating, it’s not just a matter of learning to be in the present moment. You also think about the future. What bad qualities do you have that you can prevent from arising again? What good qualities do you have that you give rise to and then strengthen even more? That’s a good use of your meditation time as well.