BE NICE, BE KIND...AND BE HEALTHY

Many thanks to Pam and Cheryl for your kind words! I am glad you visited---please come back again when you'd like to.

I wanted to take a moment to explain a little more about the Intention-Setting Ceremony Matt and I attended at the Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society on New Year's Eve, and what it meant for me. Each of us who were there named our intentions for the coming year, and lit a candle. My intentions were to take care of my diabetes and health, to be more compassionate to others, and to not speak evilly of others---this last, of course, means to engage only in skillful speech. No gossiping allowed. And I'm a born and bred Brooklynite who is part Italian, for God's sake. Do any of you know how difficult it can be to keep one of us from jabbering on about someone else?

But one thing I learned from gossiping is that it always ended up making me feel lousy. Now, when I say "gossiping", I don't mean speaking with care about a friend for whom you're concerned because they are sick, and the like---I mean catty, useless talking. And yet, even as I nattered on about this person or that, I felt awful. I knew it was wrong and unfair, even if the person about whom I was speaking wasn't a very nice or kind person. It hurt to do it, but I kept right on doing it because it was a kind of addiction in a sense.

Gossiping also drags out a whole lot of other feelings, including anger. At least for me it did. I already have a lot of anger in me from a past which I haven't yet resolved, and gossiping just added to the load. I obsessed over other people's words and behavior, and it would bring me to a height of pissed-offness that made me grit my teeth so that my jaw hurt afterwards. And boy, could I justify it: "His politics are all wrong, so he's The Enemy!" On the heels of this justification, I kept renewing this behavior, solidifying it, by being absolutely confrontational with others. Okay, don't let me sugar-coat it: I was a Number-One Bitch.

I've already told a few people that I am sorry for the way I have acted. They have accepted my apologies; in doing so, they have treated me better than I had treated them. They have taught me, and I'm grateful for the lesson.

And---boy howdy!---besides the cultivation and nurturing of compassion, there are other benefits to ridding myself of the gossiping and unskillful speech habit: in stopping the blathering, I am less angry. When I'm less angry, I'm less stressed. Less stress means lower blood glucose readings. So, skillful speech to me also means a skillful life.


I'd like to include a link to a website at which I'm a moderator. It's called Eunoia, and it's a fun place to be. It also had its day regarding unskillful speech, but it appears that that's behind it now! Here's the link: http://afunplacetobe.myfreeforum.org/

For anyone who may be interested in Noah Levine and the Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, please visit this link: http://www.againstthestream.org/