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The Importance of Nonviolent Communication

What is Nonviolent Communication

Basic principles of healthy relationships rely on nonviolent communication. Being non-violent doesn’t only mean that you don’t want to strangle the person you’re talking with. Nonviolent communication also has to be nonviolent in the verbal sense, meaning that there are no insults, threats, etc. According to some authors, verbal violence can sometimes be equally as bad as physical violence. Bullying is the best example of this possibility- children oftentimes aren’t physically but verbally abused, and this can leave a deep mark in their character.

According to Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg, who is the founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, nonviolent communication (NVC) isn’t only characterized by the lack of violence (The Center for NVC, n.d.). Compassion is the chief ingredient of NVC.

Moreover, Rosenberg believes that values and role-models of a society influence the prominence of violent behaviors. Therefore, we can minimize violent communication by changing the situational factors individuals are exposed to. Later, we will talk about specific interventions that sought to ameliorate communication skills in prison inmates, which is essentially an attempt to violent communication (and violence altogether) by changing situational variables (prison treatment). Most programs seeking to improve people’s communication skills rely on the concepts of empathy and compassion.

Furthermore, Rosenberg believes that we are all inherently compassionate and nonviolent beings. This is true, for most people. But psychologists agree that some forms of psychopathy are caused by a pure lack of anything that could even resemble empathy.

We will talk about this at the end of the text when we’ll give you a quick psychopathy checklist.

Nonviolent Communication In Everyday Life

Communication is a two-way process. A good way to make a neutral dialogue potentially violent is to not listen properly.

Experts who organized programs for the improvement of social skills in inmates and parolees noticed that one of the first things that people learn is the so-called empathic listening (Marlow et al. 2011). By listening empathically, you lay the ground for good, compassionate communication. Moreover, by doing this first, you show that you are ready to “make the first move” in terms of empathy, that you are ready to give (empathy) before others give anything to you.

It is not hard to listen empathically. You simply have to stay silent and listen while the other person is talking. To show that you’re listening, you can sometimes paraphrase what others say to you.

For instance, let’s take an everyday example: your friend comes to you with a mix of sadness and hostility over his recent breakup. Instead of saying to him “oh, just forget about it, you’ll find another girl”, or “come on man, buck up”, you should first stay silent and listen what he has to say. Then you’ll seek the right opportunity to show an emphatic reaction- paraphrasing. For instance, if your friend says “in the past I sometimes felt so indifferent to her”, you can paraphrase it as “So, after all, you know how it is not to care about someone. How does that make you feel?”.

Note that paraphrasing is in itself an act of interpretation. You can never (nor would this be useful) “completely” paraphrase someone’s statements, you can only give your subjective interpretation. By interpreting, you help the other person understand their emotions and thoughts.

A good tool to develop empathy for oneself and others is vipassana meditation (insight meditation) that incorporates principles of loving-kindness.

Principles of Nonviolent Communication

There is one very useful nonviolent communication guide (Lee et al. 2003), which was first used by healthcare providers. According to these authors, there are three basic principles of nonviolent communication:

1. Observing others’ emotions without evaluating them

2. Expressing oneself without judging others

3. Making clear requests, the presenting of which is respectful

Analogous to these principles, there are three basic principles of emphatic reception of information:

1. Paying attention to what the other person is observing

2. Knowing what others feel and need

3. Knowing others’ requests

We can see the utility of these last three points in a typical situation that is so frustrating to everybody. Imagine that you are trying to find a parking spot in the middle of a big city. As we all know, this is sometimes all but impossible. After a 15-minutes search, you finally find an empty spot and rush to take it. However, just as you prepare to park it, another car rushes in and takes the spot. Needless to say, you are completely furious. Most people would perhaps start an argument over the parking spot, but these kinds of arguments lead nowhere.

How To Apply These Principles

What you can do is analyze the behavior of the person who took your spot, through the prism of the three aforementioned principles- knowing what the other person is observing; knowing others’ feelings and needs; knowing others’ requests. First of all, you might conclude that the other person simply didn’t see you (here, you’re using the first principle). Even if the other individual saw you, it is possible that he is anxious and upset about something, and that he did this automatically, without wanting to do this on purpose (principle 2). And finally, you can suppose that he needed this spot very badly, for some reason (principle 3). Only once you do this analysis can you engage in good, healthy communication. In these situations, even if the other person is nervous and hostile, he or she will most probably see that you are just seeking to have a normal conversation.

Nonviolent Communication At Work

There is one important thing when it comes to communication at the workplace- criticism. Regarding this topic, it should be noted that evaluating other’s performance, and other’s personality traits are two completely different things. We tend to generalize our conclusions far too much, and these generalizations are often linked with the so-called inner attribution– we think that the cause of someone’s behavior lies chiefly in personality traits. For instance, when someone makes a mistake, we might say “oh, he’s stupid”. Needless to say, this is blatant, and most possibly wrong, overgeneralization.

Nonviolent communication refrains from these kinds of generalizations, and only evaluates performance. Instead of saying “he’s stupid”, we can say “sure, he did a stupid thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s stupid altogether”. In a way, this is the most important thing regarding constructive criticism.

Criticism must not be avoided. Just like empathy, it is an essential part of communication.

Simply do it skillfully by means of nonviolent communication.

A few references cited in this article:

Lee, A.C, Kessler, M.C., Varon, D., Martinowitz, U., Heim, M., Rosenberg, M. & Molho, P. (2003). Nonviolent (emphatic) communication for health care providers. Wiley Online Library. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2516.1998.440335.x

Marlow, E., Nyamathi, A., Grajeda, W.T. (2011). Nonviolent Communication Training and Empathy in Male Parolees. Journal of Correctional Health Care. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1078345811420979

The Center For Nonviolent Communication (n.d.). What is NVC? Available at: https://www.cnvc.org/node/6856

Cruelty and the Nature of Violence

The Nature of Cruelty

Sometimes it’s almost inconceivable that so many people are capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty. Some of them are very visible – abandoned pets, beaten up kids and domestic abuse. Yet some are inflicted on us by our own selves: constant negative rumination and beliefs that we are ‘not enough’. This is cruelty.

Cruelty means showing indifference to suffering. It can also mean actually inflicting it, or in some very clinical cases, taking pleasure in inflicting it.

There are forces that drive this cruelty – unconscious dislikes or just a feeling of being uncomfortable with something. This all inflicts suffering.

We can be all ‘nice people’, but still inflict suffering to ourselves and/or others.

We need to make conscious efforts to acknowledge our dislikes and see that another person does actually suffer. This awareness or mindfulness of suffering brings understanding and kindness to our own selves and others. You simply cannot move to eliminate cruelty without a better understanding of yourself and others. When you do understand and accept, the unconscious feelings lose the grip over you and do not trigger cruel intentions or actions.

Therefore, cruelty is the enemy of compassion. Any unkind responses are to be avoided. Yet it is very challenging because of the internal and external pressures that actually trigger such responses.

Why is it important to recognize cruelty!

When are aware of those causes and can look deeper into them, we can befriend them and move on. This brings a lot of generosity to ourselves and others, feelings of compassion and kindness.

Without a recognition that it is our own discomfort that causes the suffering of others, we cannot escape and eliminate cruelty.
Let’s hear from Ajahn Sumedho, a Buddhist monk, who said the following in his book “Peace is a simple step”.

‘We kill because of basic ignorance, this unreflecting human mind that tells us to annihilate what is in our way. However, with reflection we are changing that; we are transcending that basic instinctual, animal pattern. We are not just being law-abiding puppets of society, afraid to kill because we are afraid of being punished. Now we are really taking on responsibility. We respect the lives of other creatures, even the ones we don’t like’.

Meditation cultivates awareness

Meditation is a tool that helps us to condition our own minds, so we can let go of the ingrained hard-line views and many fixed ideas, but instead, open up to our own selves and the world around us.

Mindfulness meditation, when practiced in a disciplined fashion, trains our self-control. The latter, on the other hand, helps to deal with short attention span and hatred.

Mindfulness exercise

One great mindfulness exercise that you can employ during your meditation or simply during your day is to feel your emotions in your body.

What it means, when you feel hate or an intent to be cruel, simply pause and visualize your emotion. Breathe and feel where in your body this emotion ‘lives’. In example, you can maybe feel it in your throat or near the belly button. Turn your attention to it, observe and accept it as it is. This will make it subside and you can exercise your self-control over it. This is how awarenesses and attention to your own self help you to live without cruelty and hatred.

Violence vs Calmness

Psychologist David Hume long ago tried distinguishing ‘violent’ passions and ‘calm’ passions. When you practice meditation and employ this mindfulness exercise described above, you cultivate calmness and emotional stability. You do not change who you are, you are just living as a better you.

There are countless implications to living with a lot of hatred and cruel intentions. Jon Kabat-Zinn in his ‘Full Catastrophe Living’ writes:

‘high hostility scores predicted not just myocardial infarction and death from high disease but also increased risk of death from cancer and other causes as well’

We at Ahimsa Meditation have also been reporting on multiple studies that link poor nutrition to violent behaviors (Nutrition of Nonviolence), so you can see that it is all interconnected and you need to employ a holistic approach to better your life.

Paying attention to your nutrition, being mindful about your feelings in your body and living a calmer and kinder life, all this contributes to health and happiness.

Meditation for Greed | Minimalism vs Consumerism

Are we here at Ahimsa Meditation leaning towards ultra-minimalism or even asceticism? Are we trying to monetize meditation and create consumer products for this ever increasing market? Our stance is neither of these options. Let us disucuss consumerism, values of enough and how meditation for greed can help us all.

Whilst we think that healthy minimalism is great and our society’s insatiable nature of consumption should be addressed, we are also great advocates of human progress.

Humankind has evolved to live more peacefully and we should enjoy the results of such progress. One of the biggest examples is that we are now able to nourish our bodies with plant-based foods without the need for killing innocent animals.

We are also capable to diagnose and treat many diseases, we have environment-friendly cars and so on. Yet if you look into worldwide statistics, there are so many people who die from overconsumption and lavish lifestyles. Much more when compared to people who suffer from malnourishment and hunger. Mindful living starts with meditation for greed as a tool to take our insatiability.

It just shows that consumerism, being the driving force of a capitalist society, also steers us all in a very wrong direction. This destructing direction is clearly visible today. We are horrified that billions of innocent animals are slaughtered every year for our food. Global warming is not just a distant scare anymore. Violence is on the rise even in the most developed nations.

Lifestyle

When it comes to our lifestyle, we are capable to live happy right at this moment provided that have “enough” of our basic needs.

What are those? Everyone should have enough food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. It would be irrational to ask a man to be virtuous if they cannot get at least these.

Nutrition

Healthy nutrition can also showcase how aiming for ‘enough’ benefits to our bodies. Plant-based whole foods provide enough protein for your balanced nutrition. You also can get enough fiber from whole grains, oats, pseudo grains like buckwheat and quinoa. Enough doesn’t mean bare minimum, you can nourish your body with enough nutrients and vitamins by eating food derived from non-violent sources.

As opposed to that, think about junk food. It simply doesn’t give us what we need from food. Instead, it fills us with toxins. Materialistic values fill us with psychological toxins. Junk values are distorting our minds. Materialism is KFC for the soul.

That’s how our current system trains us “there is never enough”.

Enough & Happiness

Thich Nhat Hahn in his book “The Art of Living” says that there are a few mindfulness trainings and one of them is directly focused on finding true happiness. He suggests the following mantra or contemplation can be added to your meditation routine: “I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude, not on external conditions, and that I can live in a present moment happily simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy.”

This allows us to forego that annoying thought that creeps in from time to time – ‘Am I good enough?’ It is not productive. You most probably already have enough of everything to be happy.

R. and E. Skidelsky in the book “How much is enough?” suggest at least three major building blocks of a strategy how to create a better world for everyone: reduce the desire to consume and distribute the fruits of productivity more evenly. They suggest that societies could introduce basic income, reduce the pressure to consume by creating a tax on consumption (i.e. luxury items) instead of on income, and significantly reduce the advertising. They hope that people can discover for themselves ways of life in which money-making is not central.

Greed

When greed is our ultimate motivation, it’s clear that no matter how much we have, it’s simply never enough.

Gandhi said something similar: “There is enough in this world for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Meditation for greed

Meditation can provide an effective platform to deal with greed. Being a close observer of your own self allows us to see clearly own true inner needs and wants. And not the ones that are dictated by our consumerist society. You may then realize that the luxury items, that are merely some symbols of your status, are simply your ego’s desires, not yours. Values of enough come to the surface.

When you use our most simple way to meditate but add there a contemplation about your greed, you will be able to face it directly, observe it and understand it better.

What happens next is that your greed will lose its grip over you. You will live in an abundant place of plenty where you have enough of almost everything you need. It brings you an enormous amount of happiness and also clarity how to live your life.

And that’s a very good thing. You may call it simplicity or values of enough, your own kind of minimalism, but it is a journey of finding a better life.

Let’s talk about our desire to be special

We hope that with this article we would be able to start a conversation with everyone of you about a modern goal that everyone is or needs to be special.

Do you really need it? Is it OK to be special at all? Is it healthy to strive to be special?

What is it ‘to feel special’?

It seems that this ‘specialness’ comes from our own natural selection. Our feelings of uniqueness and superiority lie in the heart of that value system of survival. Some animals do that too. Unfortunately for other species, killing is the way how the strong ones assert their ‘specialness’. This behaviour is what we can call a very pedestrian one, arrogant and mindless.

We have been talking about evolution and human progress also to showcase that we have all the means to move past this behaviour and live a life of moral meaning. We have learned how to grow enough food on the planet and cure many diseases. Our progress should ensure we live better. That also means we all live better, no matter of a social status and background. This is how we can inject moral meaning into all aspects of our life.

Violence to justify that we can feel special?

Killing others for food is simply not an option. We do not need to do that. It is unethical. We are not special compared to a goat or a pig, we do not have any right to kill them. Nowadays our survival does not depend on them.

Deeply embedded in Buddhist thought is the intrinsic moral value of sentient life. Not just the value of human beings but the value of all organisms that have subjective experience and so are capable of pain and pleasure, of suffering and not suffering. This value in turn imparts value to other things such as helping people, being kind to dogs etc.

How can we deal with this social notion of ‘specialness’?

Mindful mediation can help us to examine our stories carefully. We can listen to our inner voices from the ground up. This allows us, if we choose of course, to separate truth from fabrication. We can ditch the need to feeling special and instead live by your own intrinsic values, in synergy with others.

One of the suggestion from us at Ahimsa Meditation is to look at the concept of non-self, or letting go of your ego. It will help to get rid of the ‘specialness’ feeling.

Meditation offers us to see clearly that there is a way to live that is not going with the natural selection flow or completely against it. Robert Wright, in his book “Why Buddhism is True” said that there is a concept of Middle Way where you are attuned to the impermanence, non-self and unsatisfactoriness of living and it brings liberation and happiness”.

Clearly, we are so easily inclined to accept the aim of feeling special because we think our life would be better off like that. Yet what it does, is something very opposite – it enslaves us in this rat race of ‘more, more and yet some more’ (it could be money, fame, you name it). You have a moment of feeling ‘special;’ and then it vanes, you need to become even more special. This may never end. It means you are not living your own life, it’s almost like someone programmed it for you.

Letting go of your ’specialness’ and ego will mean you can listen to what you really need and want. You can start living your life by your own rules.

How is it to live with an aim of ‘specialness’ for you?

We’ve all been (or still are) there. Let’s help each other and share our stories of how the aim of being special is actually not helpful at all.

What are your thoughts, contemplation and advice for others? Please leave your comments below or send us a message through Contact form – let’t share. Thank you.

Evolution and Nonviolence: Meditation Practice and Plant-Based Nutrition

We have never lived better in our humankind history. We enjoy rapid technological progress along with decreased poverty, longer life spans and increased comfort virtually in every aspect of our lives.

Yet it seems that we are overlooking the quality of life whilst striving to make it longer, i.e. going for quantity.

Stress and Lifestyle Diseases

It means that we live longer, but we live sicker, humans develop more and more lifestyle diseases. Think of obesity, high blood pressure, heart diseases and type 2 diabetes that are now the major causes of human deaths.

On top of that, our pace of life, increased stress levels and overstimulation trigger a variety of mental health conditions. These we still do not really know how to address.

Both physical and mental health issues trigger an increase in violence to yourselves and others, which usually results in drugs use, crime or anti-social behaviour.

If we go even further from our individual concerns, we see a much bigger picture of our polluted environment, inefficient use of land and resources, growing inequality where rich are getting richer whilst poor people are getting poorer and we still cannot feed over 800 million people on our planet.

Overconsumption is not only mindless and damaging to everyone one of and the planet, but it also feeds those rich pharmaceutical and big food businesses that employ manipulative marketing techniques to pollute our minds and nature.

All of these factors contribute to overall mental and physical dis-ease and trigger an increase in violence, crime, armed conflicts and cruelty to one another and nature.

Wanting is lacking. The more we want, the more we drip ourselves away. That’s why this concept of nonviolence evolution is so important. The less we want, the more we can enjoy and be kind to ourselves and others.

Meditation practice helps us to cultivate nonviolence and therefore is a foundation of the well-being of humans, all living beings and our environment

There is a multitude of studies showcasing benefits to your physical and mental health that come from training your mind by means of meditation.

Meditation practice has the ability to help all of us to:

Lessen the anxiety;
Overcome past emotional traumas and pain;
Deal with attention deficit;
Cope with anger and manage the response to everyday stress factors.

Meditation transforms four neural pathways:

Reaction to disturbing events, stress and recovery;
Compassion and empathy;
Attention (retrains our habits of focus);
Our very sense of self.

Would you enjoy a more strong immune system, lessen inflammation and blood pressure? Or maybe lower cortisol levels, slower breath rate, and ability to cope with chronic diseases like cancer? Some would be happy to get help to overcome drug or alcohol addictions.

Evolution Should Work For Us not Against!

Our human progress and development up to date ensure that we have all the possibilities to strive on plant-based whole foods nutrition, live simpler and kinder lives and eradicate hunger and cruelty. It hasn’t been possible before and we appreciate the work and the challenges of our ancestors, but we have a needed capacity and tools for this change now.

We live in an era with its critically important issues of pollution and environmental damage, mental health decline and poor nutrition. Yet at the same time, we enjoy technological progress that allows us to grow and transport food all over the world. It means that we can stop slaughtering animals and enjoy healthier nutrition based on plant foods all year round. Compassion to all living beings extends to communities, cooperation between nations and a humane co-habitation with animals.

Surely, our progress and evolution should work for us and for others too. No one needs to be intentionally killed for food. Have a look at our Nutrition of Nonviolence article to explore how you can switch to plant-based whole foods today.

Antonia Macaro said: “Our values and ethics are taking us (evolution-wise) beyond animal self-preservation”.

What is there for you and me? Why do we all need to adopt this compassionate approach to our evolution?

We can all reap enormous benefits in our physical, emotional, mental and social lives:

More peaceful living for all, harmonious communities and understanding between all of us;
Lower stress levels of everyone, increase kindness and compassion;
Lower crime, pollution, world hunger;
Less suffering and eliminate killing of innocent living beings and especially farmed animals;
Get healthier, both mentally and physically, regulate your emotional state and enjoy better relationships;
Promote and enjoy ethical living and moderate consumption by means of living in an economy of ‘enough’.

We simply increase well-being for all living beings.

Meditation is a practice that helps to train or cultivate our minds

Evidently, it helps you to get back to mindful states more often and you benefit from it by being calmer, more composed and joyful.

Yet you, of course, fail sometimes, your mind will jump somewhere during meditation and that’s ok too. Be more imperfect. Evolution happens through mistakes. Being kind to ourselves and being kind to the planet is, ultimately, the same thing. Being kind is being selfishly nonviolent.

You can think of meditation as something similar to attending a gym for your mind. It is a gradual process and the benefits are almost immediate and long-lasting. Meditation is by definition increasingly important on a personal, interpersonal and even global scale.

See more about meditation benefits and start meditating today with our basic instructions on concentration meditation on breathing.

Loving – Kindness Meditation Practice (Metta)

When you are comfortable with basic meditation instructions, meta-awareness, self-acceptance and letting go of your ego, it is recommended that you incorporate loving-kindness (metta) practice into your meditation.

Ahimsa Meditation hopes that we all can spend some time actively practising nonviolence in your mind.

We can all send wishes of health, happiness, safety and peace to yourself and then to your family and close friends.

We can then extend it to our pets and people you know less. You can follow by sending these wishes to people we have difficulties with. Finish by sending loving – kindness to all living beings.

This is the very essence of loving-kindness meditation. You start reflecting on your own well-being, health, happiness, safety, peace and nonviolent life. Then gradually extend it to all circles of your life to include people and living beings you do not like or do not even know. It is a wonderfully warm and pleasant state of mind that you will develop.

Similarly, your loving-kindness practice can be practised longer with deeper appreciation and gratitude to everyone in your life including friends and family, pets, acquaintances, but also difficult people and the entire world.

Loving-Kindness meditation practice instructions

Therefore, if you want to structure this meditation into steps, there are the following ones that are included in your Metta Bhavana meditation:

Preparing for meditation by doing a body scan and dedicating some time on concentration on breathing;
Concentrating your attention on yourself;
Calling to mind a good friend of yours;
Thinking of a neutral person (someone you do not know much);
Turning your attention to a difficult person (a true challenge is to think about them with equanimity);
Concentrating on all four people (simply spread your loving kindness feelings and thoughts to everyone);
Allowing your metta to expand outward (and then spread it to the whole world of sentient beings – give your kindness to people in distress, oppressed farmed animals and so on).

How to develop your loving – kindness meditation practice (metta)

You can contemplate on the four beneficial states of mind: loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. It is beneficial to start with loving-kindness and gradually ‘work’ towards feeling a total equanimity. In that way, you will feel calm and emotionally stable.

Acceptance and compassion practice begins from contemplating and wishing well for yourself. Then the practice extends to your family, friends, acquaintances, people you do not like or indifferent to and then the whole world.

Why metta or loving-kindness meditation is important for all of us?

Metta meditation transforms hatred into love, it develops compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. These are regarded as immeasurable characteristics by Buddhists.

Loving-kindness meditation practice brings a lot of benefits:

you may enjoy a much better sleep;
you may gain love and appreciation from other living beings;
your practice helps to protect everyone from violence and violent outbreaks;
your focus and swift concentration of mind improve;
you smile more, have better moods and therefore good looks;
you contemplate not only on good things; as you bring to mind difficult people in your life, you look directly to a reality of your life, therefore many kinds of insights are possible.

We all want well-being. It is about living a rich, full and meaningful life. Peace in our lives represents true acceptance. This unites all living beings and you can send kindness to them all too.

Insight Meditation Practice: Vipassana Meditation

How to Practice Vipassana Meditation

A big leap in the development of your meditation practice lies with vipassana meditation or, as it is sometimes called, insight meditation practice, which is going a bit further from concentrating on the breath.

The general structure of vipassana meditation practice resembles already familiar meditation practice on concentration on breathing.

At Ahimsa Meditation we invite to contemplate on nonviolence, its meaning and how it feels inside of the body. With time, this knowledge becomes more comfortable as we invite to approach it with self-acceptance and curiosity. As a result, these contemplations give way to various insights.

Everyone can deepen their vipassana meditation practice by contemplating such universal truths as impermanence, the importance of letting go of our ego and the existence of never-ending unsatisfactory feelings caused by various desires. These characteristics of our lives are universal because we all experience them. Here at Ahimsa Meditation, we invite everyone to accept them fully.

Here is our step by step guidance on vipassana meditation:

Find a quiet place and set your alarm for an initial 10 minutes (more if you feel comfortable to start with a longer session).
Sit cross-legged on a floor (use a mat and a cushion to level your hips with your knees), place your arms on your lap. Only sit on a firm chair if the cross-legged position is very uncomfortable. In general, your posture should be fairly relaxed but not sluggish, so you won’t meditate yourself to sleep. Full lotus is the most stable and firm posture, but you can adopt half-lotus or a simple cross-legged position too.
Take a few really deep breaths as so other people would be likely to hear you breathing. As a result, it should make you feel relaxed fairly quickly.
Close your eyes and start paying attention to sounds, smells, your posture, and breathing. Simply make a mental note on what you are observing. No need to judge it or dwell on it.
Pay attention to how your body feels. Start doing so by scanning your body from top to bottom and notice how even the smallest parts of your body feel. Don’t try to change anything or judge. It’s all good, you are being attentive, that’s it.
Move the focus of your attention to your breathing. Do not try to change it, just let it be. No judgment, please. Notice where in your body your breathing starts, how it flows and how it ends. To help you settle with this pattern, you can start counting your breaths from 1 to 10 and then revert back to 1.
If your attention shifts to something else, notice the very fact of this happening and then gently get your mind to count the breaths again and again. These ‘jumps’ happen all the time, so be kind to yourself. The more skillful you become, the less monkey-like your mind learns to be. Yet every single time your mind gets back to counting breaths, it also gets stronger. This, in effect, gives your mind a proper training.
When you have established a good concentration on your breathing, ask yourself what nonviolence means to you. Is it the millions of saved lives, is it your own better physical and mental health state or something else? Reflect on your thoughts, do not judge them, just contemplate as it is. Look at these questions with curiosity and acceptance. You can ride the wave of nonviolence when it is a storm in your mind, but equally, you can appreciate when your mind is still. Spend as much time as you feel comfortable contemplating peaceful and nonviolent living for yourself, your family, society and all living beings. As a result, your reflections might trigger some emotions in your body. Can you feel them as physical sensations? Note where you feel them and try to make friends with those feelings, they might be both pleasant or disturbing.
Other important themes of contemplation include an understanding of constant impermanence, non-existence of a fixed self and suffering that arises because we cling to things and do not want to let go. Surely, these themes can further enhance our nonviolence values. We understand how interconnected we all are and how harming others we ultimately harm ourselves. This flow of change and the absence of a fixed self is clearly recognized by noticing our fleeting thoughts and emotions. Simply placing a fix note as ‘there is thinking’ or ‘there is feeling’, no need to judge it or to do anything. They will simply pass as you let go. It is all about cultivating an awareness of reality ‘as it is’.
Continue for your set amount of time. When finished, allow your mind to rest for 30 seconds with no focus on anything at all. Above all, just observe and let it simply flow.
Finish by making a mental note of how you feel now and open your eyes. You have just completed an insight meditation session.

Vipassana Meditation: Collect Your Insights

Some people find it useful to get a piece of paper and a pen nearby, so they can write down their insights or simply a flow of thoughts after their meditation practice. Yet this is completely optional. Obviously, such a brain ‘dump’ can sometimes help with either letting go or to develop meta-awareness.

Noting technique is very helpful for those who are just developing their vipassana practice. Every time you are being carried away from breathing by your thoughts and feelings, it is beneficial to make a mental note about it and to put a mark whether that was a feeling or thinking and whether it was positive, negative or neutral. In other words, you are not there to evaluate it, but simply be aware of an underlying feeling or thought processes.

Why Vipassana Practice by Ahimsa Meditation?

Vipassana meditation enables us to realize a very curious paradox in Buddhist psychology: the more fully we can embrace the unhappiness, the deeper and more abiding our sense of well-being. (from Mindfulness and Psychotherapy” 2nd Edition by C. Germer, R. Siegel, P. Fulton.)

In this sense, we are being on the journey for the well-being of ourselves and others through a clearer outlook on reality. Therefore, our meditation practice becomes to look like cleaning the eyes from dust.

There is no right or wrong in meditation practice and there is no aim either. It is a journey for each one of us to cultivate wholesome seeds in our minds. Quite naturally, these seeds will grow and your life becomes calm, kind, peaceful, full of gratitude and virtue.

Similarly, letting go of our ego, ‘specialness’, realizing how impermanent all things are and that we suffer from time to time, allow us to live in true freedom and at home with ourselves and others. In other words, it is a way to true nonviolence that starts from every one of you.

Obviously, the beauty of vipassana is in its simplicity. Nonviolence in the world starts with learning how to be more kind to yourself. Be selfish with allocating time for your meditation practice. Use our downloadable vipassana meditation instructions you can get from our Courses page here.

Know that by learning how to practice vipassana meditation you are working towards a bigger goal of self-improvement and self-realization. In conclusion, you can bring kindness and compassion to the world.

A Talk About Meditation, Nonviolence and Mindful Living

This is a talk that our Ahimsa Meditation teacher gave to newcomers to meditation that were interested in his views on how to approach meditation practice. This talk combines knowledge of Buddhist teachers but also medical professionals, so both spiritual and scientific expertise. Though even if you are practising meditation already, you can also relate to misconceptions of meditation that are discussed below. Do you find ‘mindful living’ a bit vague? We discuss some specific steps of how you can live with mindfulness today.

‘Killing may be a part of nature.. but as moral, responsible human beings, although we might have murderous impulses, we do not act upon them.

If you can’t love someone, just be kind to them. If you feel a lot of anger or hatred towards me, at least refrain from hitting or killing me.’

by Ajahn Sumedho in “Peace is a simple step”

Meditation doesn’t ask us to get rid of something or to become someone else, better or smarter. It simply promotes looking at the very nature of ourselves, others and the world more clearly.

The delusions of hatred and greed, our aversion to physical discomfort and pleasure seeking ‘hedonic treadmill’ are just a few of the defilements that truly run our lives.

We live in a world full of desire. It is being masterfully maintained not just by our own delusions and aspirations to live like ‘kings and queens’, but also by outside triggers like marketing and advertising messages, social pressure.

Start your meditation practice

Just 8 weeks of moderate meditation practice (we are talking about 20-30 minutes a day) start bringing incredible benefits for every one of you.

One of the benefits meditators start to notice early is the possibility to regulate their response. They are simply able to take a pause before taking an action. That’s how it’s possible to avoid taking life or harming any living being, to avoid stealing or taking what’s not ours, not to engage in sexual misconduct. We no longer need to lie or engage in divisive speech and definitely not to intoxicate our bodies with drugs or excessive alcohol that bring heedlessness to our actions.

Jon Kabat-Zinn said wonderfully about peace in his book ‘Mindfulness is not what you think’:

‘Peace is not farther than this very moment. Peace is something that we can bring about if we actually learn to wake up a bit more as individuals and a lot more as species; if we can learn to be fully what we actually already are; to reside in the inherent potential of what is possible for us being human.’

The foundation for meditation practice, for all meditative inquiry and exploration, lies in ethics and morality, and above all, in the motivation of non-harming.

Surely, regular practice is important. Don’t you think your life is worth it to allocate just half an hour a day for yourself? It’s easy to postpone or to make a valid excuse. Yet it is just half an hour for something that important! Make it regular and it will become the most important habit of yours (well, after breathing of course!)

Non-meditator’s brain is like an unworked dough. If you think about it, you need to persistently work on your dough and have a lot of patience for it to prove.

Definition of Meditation

Evidently, there are of course a lot of misconceptions of meditation. You are probably asking yourself whether it is religious? Is it just to relax or calm oneself? Is it about achieving some paranormal states like floating? Well, it doesn’t need to be. Yes, it could be religious, you can find it as a basis of many Buddhist traditions. It could be based on medical studies like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Therapy. It could, unfortunately, be utilized by some people who try to perform some sort of mystery act out of it.

Yet, as someone said, ‘life is exactly what you think it is’, meditation is simply a practice of cultivating your mind. And our task at Ahimsa Meditation is to introduce you to nonviolence and meditative practices where you learn how to be kind to yourself and others.

Being in touch with reality is what meditation is about, not the mystical states or going away from it. It is actually being and feeling the reality rather than surrendering to media/external influence.

Mindfulness

In our meditation practice we work to understand and live better with our desires, occasional ill inclinations, being too passive, restless or having too many doubts. Cultivating your mind by means of meditation helps everyone to be more self-aware.

Meditation is a practice that cultivates a beneficial state of mindfulness. Hence, meditation is a process, how you can achieve a state of mindfulness.

What’s the most common definition of mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.

(Kabat-Zinn, 1996)

Knowing about all those physical, mental and emotional benefits of meditation practice, why mindfulness? It is a state that enables you to live happily, with acceptance, non-judgmentally and by a strong set of intrinsic values. You do not need to be religious to know that there are universal teachings that govern almost all aspects of our lives.

Clarification of your own values for mindful living

This re-discovering of your own values doesn’t need to be painful – the goodness is already inside of every one of us. Yet we need to practice it.

Therefore, here is a short list of ethical actions that can become a guide for your own mindful livelihood:

Protect the lives of all living beings. To protect other beings is to protect ourselves.
Prevent the exploitation by humans of other living beings and of nature. This is a practice of generosity.
Protect everyone from abuse, preserve the happiness of individuals and families.
Practice deep listening and loving speech.
Consume mindfully (the provenance of produce is important for your well-being).

Thank you for your attention, hopefully, you find it useful and may want to use some of it for your own contemplation. Have a good meditation practice!

A Life of Nonviolence

In this short article, we want to discuss values, mindfulness, our ego, constant change and evolution, but also suffering and stress. We see that there is a life of nonviolence or Ahimsa way that is possible through meditation and training of our mind.

Life values

What is your main value as a human?

Is there such thing that can unify all humans and sentient beings – can it be “value of life itself”.

The act of taking someone’s life is an ultimate crime. We need to develop a reverence for life. Can we live without harming others? Can we extend this compassion and harmlessness to all living beings?

Our progress allows and requires us to thrive by living harmoniously with others.

Why be mindful of life

Let’s be mindful.

Mindfulness helps us to contemplate what is the value of life. It is anything but violence. It is not killing – be it others or yourself. So mindfulness is connected to kindness and compassion. It starts with you, your body and mind and then extends to your family and so on.

Mindful eating leads to mindful health, better care about our body. This, in turn, leads to mindful consumption and then to mindful relationships, both interpersonal and with nature.

Why hold back your ego

Hold on, put a mindful cap on, who are you?

Let’s think about it. Are we a collection of organs? Is there a soul? Is there a centre of our persona or so-called ego?

Such contemplation may lead us to a liberating effect of egolessness. There is really nowhere to go and no one to be, but just be.

Why you do not need to be afraid of change

We all change, we all sentient beings are born and die. We form communities, learn, enhance and develop our lives.

Enhancement brings evolution.

Natural evolution is happening all the time. Our wants are subjected to do the same but artificially. Our needs are actually not that big – we need shelter, food, clothing, medicine. The rest are wants – they create attachments, delusion and thus suffering.

Evolution, our progress and development also mean that we have now enough tools and ways how to grow enough food, secure food supply and stop relying on killing others for our own food, clothing or entertainment. We can stop that suffering. We should be proud of our achievements so far, they allow us to transform our living into a more peaceful and pleasant one.

Yet suffering is everywhere.

What we can do is to cultivate nonviolence, a non-harming way of life.

How? By kindness and compassion, joy when others do/live well and serenity in our everyday lives. This compassion that extends to all living beings makes it possible for us to live in harmony and peace with others. Everyone can start today – change nutrition, make their choice whilst shopping, give a helping hand at animal sanctuaries, feed the hungry, and all of this can be cultivated in your mind.

Meditation

Cultivation is possible through meditation.

Meditation is not just about concentrating and focusing your mind, it can provide seeds to possible insights. Studies proved that it enhances your well-being by strengthening physical and mental health.

How can you start improving your well-being in the context of nonviolent life? Consider employing a plant-based whole foods diet, practising mindfulness meditation and engaging in ethical business.

Plant-based whole foods nutrition is devoid of violence both towards your own body and others’. There should be no intentional killing when it comes to our livelihood and business activities. It is clear that we live in a world of abundance and overconsumption. Abusive marketing and advertising make us believe that our wants are actually our needs. It stimulates new wants in us all the time.

There are many triggers for violence. One of them is inequality. Income inequality becomes truly shocking when investment bankers earn a thousand times more than other workers. From the nutritional side, excessive consumption of sugar triggers increase in crime and violent behaviour, it also affects our current rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic.

It is evident that everything is truly interconnected: how we can care best for our bodies, train our minds, provide good nutrition and adopt a mindful approach to living.

How to live well?

There is a very simple solution that solves our current predicament – it is a mindful living based on the life-enhancing value of nonviolence. We can truly embrace it wholeheartedly and make it as a centre of all our activities, including nutrition, relationships, politics, business, environment and simply being in this world, we can solve a puzzle of happy living.

Nonviolence is a Basis of Life

Learn more about Nonviolence (or non violence)

Nonviolence (non violence) isn’t a wrong word (as others can critique that it is too passive) – it is actually a Middle Way. It is not extreme as peace or war but gives a non-dualistic view on actions between being violent and being distant from existence. Nonviolence describes neutrality, but expresses an active position too, protest and freedom. It is a step from a black and white picture of the world to a more mindful, reflective, critical, content and contemplative living.

Here is a very important quote from Vandenbroeck “Less is more: an anthology of ancient and modern voices raised in praise of simplicity” written back in 1996:

Pacifists become militants
Freedom fighters become tyrants
Blessings become curses.
Help becomes hindrance
More becomes less.

Nonviolence is the basis of life

The precept not to kill is present in all religions and it is a fundamental part of ethics and morality. Mark Kurlansky, in his book “Nonviolence: a history of a dangerous era” stated that there is no proactive word for an act of nonviolence. Peace isn’t going to describe it all. Nonviolence stretches from being peaceful and passive, to being calm and actively seeking justice and equality.

In many works nonviolence is also about the whole world – how peaceful it can be, how harmonious and simply a nice place to live. It is all great targets to aspire to but the major problem lies within – we are not nonviolent towards ourselves. We live constantly ruminating about our past and worry about our future, we torture ourselves with thoughts, we simply hurt ourselves. This mindless living then translates to overconsumption, and this abundance, unfortunately, causes our current epidemic of obesity. It is of course not that straightforward.

Surely, many of us are engaged in meaningful careers and some even work in social enterprises which allow to give back to society, but with no doubt our busy lifestyles and lack of time are pressing us to succumb to advertising and convenience industry pressure – we eat on the go, consume a lot of sugary, fatty snacks and pre-made meals.

Nonviolence should work for us

It’s clear that we should become beneficiaries of nonviolence. We should re-learn how to be kind and compassionate to ourselves, enjoy our lives and spend our valuable time on what matters most.

The latter is most surely not just us alone. We think about our families, friends and even pets. As soon as we master being “in our own zone or flow”, we should extend compassion and kindness to those around us. After all, they are not different from you at all. They want happiness (emotional health) and well-being (physical and mental health).

Mindfulness and interdependence of all things

This is how mindfulness works interdependently. We all want the same thing, so why not doing just so and helping others?

This interdependence also means that positive actions will bring positive results and vice versa. If we think further, it is clear that only nonviolence is capable to be of help or our mission to enjoy life with others.

Scientists have proven that acts of kindness breed happiness in ourselves. Surprisingly, we don’t need to just care about people we know. Extending this compassion to all living beings brings maximum results.

Mindfulness trains the mind

The mind becomes able to pause and reflect. We can then choose a better response to the situations in our lives in a nonviolent way.

Nonviolence and Nutrition

Another application of nonviolence is nutrition. If we adopt a nonviolent approach, which means we surely do not eat anything sentient that has been industrially farmed and killed to become our food, we reap health benefits too. Vegan nutrition helps us to maintain a healthy weight, get rid of allergies, reverse many lifestyle diseases and better our mental health too. It also saves millions or even billions of animal lives annually and helps to protect the environment from global warming. It’s truly an interconnected world that lacks a true nonviolent approach to living.

Many studies confirmed that bad nutrition, excessive sugar, salt and cheap fat consumption is linked to violence, crime and poor mental health. Mental health issues can trigger anger, aggression and violent incidents too. This link is another reason how good nutrition can help everyone to leave not only in a better world but being healthier too. Check out our Nutrition of Nonviolence: Plant-based Approach recommendations and framework.

Nonviolence as a Holistic Way of Living

We see that nonviolence becomes much more than an aim in itself, it contributes to a happier and healthier life. This holistic approach incorporates mindfulness meditation and plant-based whole foods nutrition. It is aligned with a new way of doing business which we call an economy of enough. We strive to achieve well-being and it is clear that it is only possible by being kind to all living beings.