Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People - Mark Westmoquette

On Thursday 12 May Mark Westmoquette will join us at the shop to present his latest book "Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People". 

This is a unique guide to coping with challenging people using  practical Zen and mindfulness tools. It helps readers explore their  reactions, break free from knee-jerk response patterns and see if these  people may in fact prove to be useful teachers in life –  troublesome Buddhas. This is a guide to applying the  teachings of mindfulness and Zen to the troublesome or challenging  people in our lives. Perhaps you can see there’s often a pattern to your  behaviour in relation to them and that it often causes pain – perhaps a  great deal of pain. The only way we can grow is by facing this pain,  acknowledging how we feel and how we’ve reacted, and making an intention  or commitment to end this repeating pattern of suffering.  In  this book, Mark Westmoquette speaks from a place of profound personal  experience. A Zen monk, he has endured two life-changing traumas caused  by other people: his sexual abuse by his own father; and his  stepfather’s death and mother’s very serious injury in a car crash due  to the careless driving of an off-duty policeman. He stresses that by  bringing awareness and kindness to these relationships, our initial  stance of “I can’t stand this person, they need to change” will  naturally shift into something much broader and more inclusive. The book  makes playful use of Zen koans – apparently nonsensical phrases or  stories – to help jar us out of habitual ways of perceiving the world  and nudge us toward a new perspective of wisdom and compassion.