Our actions of body and speech arise from our minds. In our daily lives, we often have conversations with others, but we rarely talk about our minds. We intentionally planned a session for students to talk about our minds, helping everyone to practice this throughout the two-day Mind Management classes.

In modern day society, there are not many people who listen or speak with mindfulness and awareness. Apart from these formal sessions, we hope each student can practice it within their lives. By speaking and listening with good motivation, they can create more positive conditions in this world.

Mindful speaking and listening

In this session, Khenpo Tengye split students into groups of two, making them switch between listener and speaker roles, while Khenpo Dawa and Khenpo Chonyi made a demonstration on stage. With a virtuous motivation, the speaker faces the listener while being mindful and aware of tone, volume, and content while speaking. The engaged listener, also with a virtuous motivation, listens without making criticisms or suggestions while the speaker talks.

The Khenpos meticulously designed many engaging topics, ranging from “Why do we feel pain emotionally?” to “Why do we still want to eat when we’re full?” Through these discussions, we made some self-reflection, and also broadened our perspectives from listening to others.

At the end of the session, students individually raised the doubts they had on their minds. Their enthusiastic exchanges with the Khenpos made this personal experience deeply engraved on their minds.