Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People: How to Learn from your Troublesome Buddhas
This is a unique guide to coping with challenging people using practical Zen and mindfulness tools. It helps readers explore their reactions, break free from knee-jerk response patterns and see if these people may in fact prove to be useful teachers in life – troublesome Buddhas.
This is a guide to applying the teachings of mindfulness and Zen to the troublesome or challenging people in our lives. Perhaps you can see there’s often a pattern to your behavior in relation to them and that it often causes pain – perhaps a great deal of pain. The only way we can grow is by facing this pain, acknowledging how we feel and how we’ve reacted, and making an intention or commitment to end this repeating pattern of suffering.
In this book, Mark Westmoquette speaks from a place of profound personal experience. A Zen monk, he has endured two life-changing traumas caused by other people: his sexual abuse by his own father; his stepfather’s death, and his mother’s very serious injury in a car crash due to the careless driving of an off-duty policeman. He stresses that by bringing awareness and kindness to these relationships, our initial stance of “I can’t stand this person, they need to change” will naturally shift into something much broader and more inclusive. The book makes playful use of Zen koans – apparently nonsensical phrases or stories – to help jar us out of habitual ways of perceiving the world and nudge us toward a new perspective of wisdom and compassion.
About the Author:
Mark completed his Ph.D. in Astrophysics at UCL in London in 2007 and went on to hold research fellowships both in the UK and Germany, specializing in the fields of star formation and galaxy evolution. In 2013 he decided to change careers to follow another passion of his, yoga. After completing his teacher training, Mark’s journey led him to study mindfulness and Zen meditation, becoming a Zen Buddhist monk in 2015. After a short training period, he left monastic life and now teaches yoga and meditation full-time.
