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To love is to recognize. To be loved is to be recognized by the other. Thich Nhat Hanh

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Welcome my friends and fellow travelers to the imperfect Buddhist, where we get annoyed when our kitties walk all over our recording equipment when we're trying to record a very serious podcast. I'm your host Matthew Hockmahoney, and in today's episode, we're talking about relationships. This episode is titled Buddhism and Relationships.

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I remember I told my coworker Christy that I was Buddhist, and shortly after she said something along the lines of, Buddhists don't believe in relationships. Sorry Christy if you're listening to this if I completely butchered what you said, but it was pretty much that sentiment. I guess some people outside of Buddhism, or maybe even in certain sects of Buddhism,

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don't believe in relationships or perhaps in the past in the monastic days they didn't believe in relationships. I know they definitely didn't allow them in most monasteries. There appears to be a wide spectrum of people's interpretation when you say Buddhism and relationships. You have people say that Buddhists don't believe in relationships and then you have like a self-help book on dating written from the perspective of the Buddha.

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In a more general sense, we have the central idea in Zen of cultivating awakening through present moment awareness. And I think this is a great way to enter into the conversation of Buddhism and relationships. As we grow in our capability of being present with ourselves through meditation or meditative practices, we develop an open, embracing awareness.

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We practice that on ourselves in silent meditation and our various other ways of practicing. We can extend that same loving, open awareness that we cultivate in meditation to people in our lives, including significant others.

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When we cultivate that present moment awareness, we also get to experience more of the best things in life because the best things in life are happening in the present moment, including our relationships, our interactions with our partners, our interactions with everybody in our life. It happens right now.

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you

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A more generalist view of how things are going in the relationships department in society right now. Relationships seem a lot more complicated than they did back when our parents or grandparents dated. Why is that? I think it's pretty obvious. If you start to look at modern dating, you see some pretty obvious things that stick out as far as dating apps, social media, but then there's some other things that seem like they're maybe not as obvious.

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A lot of people lack communication skills or the ability to connect to others through conversation, holding a conversation. I know personally, in my early 20s when I left the house, I found it hard to hold conversations with anyone, let alone a woman I found attractive. That kind of put a damper on my romantic life. Not really being able to hold a conversation with someone I felt was attractive because I didn't know how to navigate it. I didn't know how to

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The way relationships start these days is pretty different. We talked about social media and dating apps, people connecting more on a surface level, obviously looking at somebody liking the way that they look, you can swipe right or left. Also connecting more surface level with what they decide to tell you about themselves in their description. So we have a veneer that we interact with in the dating world. A lot of people

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We're very self-preoccupied and part of that comes with our culture and social media and the self-preoccupation that our culture pushes through advertising and through media. There's a hero in almost every movie or show that you watch and it's all about that character. And so in a way that starts to form the mind in a way that it's like you're the main character in your movie. So you start to look at your world in that way.

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I'll read something from If the Buddha Dated, which I've not read the whole book, but this is a nice quote. It says, our refuge is being exactly where we are, not dramatizing problems by replaying them in our heads, telling stories to our friends, eliciting sympathy, and convincing ourselves that this is a very big deal. Our refuge is in the stillness of being the compassionate witness to our panic and fear, not judging it as good or bad.

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just accepting the what is of the moment.

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this open awareness that we cultivate in meditation. Usually with our own minds, thoughts and emotions, we carry that into our relationships with our partners. We can hold them in that same open loving awareness, recognizing our true self, it's a funny way of saying it, but our unitedness, our oneness in that relationship, and we can move towards unity. And it's a beautiful thing to be able to share that with a partner.

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with somebody that you can spend your life with. But we can also experience that unity outside of romantic relationships. So if you're somebody that is not particularly interested in romantic relationships or haven't had very good luck with them, you're not excluded from that experience of unity.

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the idea that you can just simply meditate and bring the awareness of meditation to your relationships. It's a bigger task than what it looks like on face value. I've been meditating off and on, mostly on for the last 10 years, and it's only more recently that I'm finding I'm able to bring this presence and love to people around me in a more consistent basis. If you are somebody that is

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practicing and doing your daily meditation in the morning and the evening. Whether it's five, ten, twenty minutes each session, it may take a little bit of time. And I think it does start with yourself. Starts with self-love. Kind of love yourself before you can love other people. But cheesy? It is. It's very true. So, starts with loving yourself.

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Recording this episode has helped me reflect a little bit on where I'm at in my relationship and how some of the stuff I've learned from the Zen temple and various self-help books has impacted my relationship. And it makes me thankful that I've had the influence of this in my life. Our relationship would be in a very different place, if at all, existing without some of this stuff. My practice moving forward, the way that I plan on approaching relationships,

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will be mostly the same. I'm continuing though to develop the perspective of other as self, trying to move closer to unity, viewing my partner's needs the same as my own. It is a moment-to-moment practice. We are perfect the way we are, but there's always room for improvement in that this path of awareness and awakening is something that is continually walked and it's never really completed.

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I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review my show in your podcast. Service of choice, for instance, if you're in Spotify clicking the stars. Give me a lot of stars. And maybe leaving a couple thoughts on the podcast. I really appreciate your support. It encourages me to keep going. I look forward to talking to you next time. Alright, bye-bye.

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