Chapter 7 - Receiving Empathically
1. Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are
experiencing.
2. The mental condition that is required of us in order to extend empathy towards another person was stated by the Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu: "The hearing that is only in the ears in one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or the mind. Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind." Empathy requires emptying the mind and listening with our whole being: when we have successfully shed all preconceived ideas and judgments about them.
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