 In this teaching, I share how Buddhists can use the teachings of Buddhist Right Speech and Mindfulness to offer unsolicited advice to others, skilfully and kindly, and in ways that promote harmony, mutual respect, and appreciation from and for the people whom we have around us. These days there is a wealth of information available to us on the internet and an abundance of people who do and don't take advantage of it. As a result, there are many people who feel compelled to offer unsolicited advice to others. Although unsolicited advice can be beneficial at times, if not done skilfully it can result in hurt feelings or disharmony between peers and friends; this is unfortunate and avoidable. Offering advice and constructive feedback like a Buddhist means doing so from a heart of compassion and loving-kindness rather than from a mind of ego or aversion, and doing so will pave the way for your feedback to be heard and appreciated. It may be worth mentioning that, from the recipient's perspective, advice is generally best received from two different groups of people:
When we receive unsolicited advice from those who fall beyond the confines of these two groups, we tend to do so with shields and skeptical minds engaged. This is something worth keeping in mind when considering to offer advice to others. OFFERING ADVICE AS A FORM OF BUDDHIST PRACTICE As Buddhists, it is important to seek every opportunity to practice the Path and apply the teaching if we wish to cultivate the views and skills that make measurable progress along the path possible. Giving feedback is just such an instance.
The act of offering advice can become a Buddhist practice if the act is approached skilfully and with the dharma in-mind. If giving-feedback is to be a proper reflection of our desire to apply our Buddhist practice to our everyday lives then we have to ensure that our motivations and intentions are coming from wholesome, compassionate, and skilful wellsprings. Not only does this ensure that the act of offering feedback helps us to cultivate the views and practices that enable progress along the Buddhist path, but it also paves the foundation for feedback to be viewed and received with an open heart and a clear mind by those to whom we offer it. So how do we begin?
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 In this article, we will cover what the Eight Worldly Concerns are and how they relate to your pursuit of happiness and your freedom from worry, stress, and anxiety. We as sentient beings, every single one of us, have two basic desires in common that drive and motivate absolutely everything that we think, say, and do: the wish to be happy and the wish to be free from suffering.
Within Buddhism, it's taught that the greed that we feel for the things that we want, the aversion that we feel to the things that we don't want, and the confusion that we have about where stable forms of happiness are actually found are the fundamental obstacles to our attainment of true happiness, peace, and well-being. These three factors are so common to the human experience that they are referred to as The Three Poisons within Buddhism and everyone struggles with these three obstacles, and so as a result, humanity as a whole struggles to move forward. Our pursuit of happiness and our aversion to being unhappy leads us to pursue or avoid what are referred to as The Eight Worldly Concerns; eight concerns which are ever-present in our lives that seem to always be at the foundation of our motivation to do anything. These eight concerns come in four rhyming and easy to remember, yet opposing, pairs: |
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Michael Turner is a pre-monastic ācariya, ariya-puggala, and a full-time Buddhist anagārika; and he is also a deeply accomplished streamentry mentor and applied-dharma teacher. He emphasises and teaches the practical application of the Buddha's teachings in our everyday lives to overcome our human problems that stand in the way of making measurable progress toward Buddhist enlightenment and he is particularly adept at explaining them in ways that can be easily understood and practiced by Western Buddhists. He has been meditating and cultivating the views and techniques that generate indestructible resilience, inner-strength, and direct experience for more than 25 years and has helped countless numbers of students and peers enhance their practice to make clear progress along the path toward Nibbāna.
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