Behavior Is Truth

Steven Barnes
2 min readMar 10, 2023

Jaime Rodriguez posted:

There is a teaching story about a Buddhist monk and his student. The monk is verbally accosted by a man who says all sorts of ugly things to the monk. The monk calmly listens and smiles until the man is finished. As the monk walks away, the student asks him how he can take such abuse with a calm smile. The monk replied, “If someone tries to give you a gift, and you don’t receive it, to whom does it belong? That man tried to give me a gift of his unpleasantness. I did not receive it. He is still holding it.”
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Healthy children can be terrified by words alone. In fact, its kinda healthy. Their egos are not fully formed, and they are not responsible for themselves.

A healthy adult? Words alone? You would need to create a pretty torturous scenario, IMO. I actually used to hold baby Nicki over the sink, threatening to put her through the garbage disposal. She laughed and laughed. Why? Because she knew I was lying. It was a deliberate exercise to teach her to pay attention to actions, not words.

I suspect I”m going to dive into this subject on FIREDANCE LIVE Saturday. Join us!

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Steven Barnes is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: FIREDANCE LIVE!
Time: Mar 11, 2023 12:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Sat, until Mar 18, 2023, 2 occurrence(s)
Mar 11, 2023 12:00 PM
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Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.