Internet notebook about my work: deep listening to facilitate positive change

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Friday 5 October 2007

The Zen of positive change

What can we learn from Zen for positive change towards sustainable development? Zen like other schools of Buddhism focuses on spiritual change. In all traditions the spiritual change process is depicted in ten phases. The pictures here come from the Chinese Zen (Chan) tradition. They are attributed to Kuo An Shi Yuan,who added a poem and a commentary to each picture. I added my 'learning' for positive change to the original titles.

1. Searching for the ox – analyzing the situation
2. Seeing some traces – identifying the behaviour we want to change
3. Seeing the ox –defining desired behaviour
4. Catching the ox – analyzing obstacles for change
5. Herding the ox – analyzing motives for change
6. Riding the ox home – making change easy
7. Ox vanishes, man remains – making the new behaviour normal and desirable
8. Man and ox are lost – change has turned into a habit
9. Returning to the origin – we understand everything changes and all phenomena are interdependent
10. Entering the market place with empty hands – we apply the learning about change in other spheres of life.

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