Before You Begin

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What if the key to harmonious relationships was not changing the people around you, but learning to understand and train your own mind?

Relationships are among the most meaningful experiences of human life. They can bring companionship, affection, friendship, love, and joy. Yet they can also become circumstances through which anger, frustration, disappointment, jealousy, resentment, loneliness, and other forms of discontentedness arise.

Why do relationships that begin with love sometimes develop into conflict? Why do disagreements lead to anger? Why do expectations lead to disappointment? And is it possible to genuinely love another person without becoming attached to them?

Harmony in Relationships: Developing Peaceful and Wholesome Relationships Through The Teachings of The Buddha provides a comprehensive and practical approach to understanding these questions and transforming the way we experience relationships.

Drawing upon The Teachings of The Buddha, Teacher David Roylance guides readers toward a profound understanding: lasting harmony does not depend upon controlling others, obtaining agreement, or arranging circumstances according to our preferences. It develops through cultivating wisdom, eliminating craving, anger, and ignorance (unknowing of true reality), and learning to participate in relationships with generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom.

Throughout 23 comprehensive chapters, you will discover how to:

• Develop peaceful and wholesome relationships by understanding the mind and the causes of harmony and disharmony.

• Understand True Love without attachment, learning to distinguish genuine loving-kindness from craving, possessiveness, jealousy, and emotional dependency.

• Eliminate expectations that create discontentedness and recognize that every person remains responsible for their own decisions and the results of those decisions.

• Communicate with wisdom and kindness, navigate disagreements peacefully, and learn when to offer guidance and when to recognize that others are responsible for their own decisions.

• Develop harmonious family and professional relationships, including relationships with parents, children, friends, life partners, and colleagues.

• Make wise decisions about relationships, recognizing when to develop closer associations, adjust participation, or peacefully conclude an unwise relationship.

• Apply The Eight Fold Path to everyday life, transforming ordinary interactions into opportunities for acquiring wisdom and purifying the mind.

Unlike approaches that focus primarily on changing another person’s behavior, this book directs attention toward the one area where genuine and lasting transformation is possible: your own mind, intentions, speech, actions, and decisions.

Harmony does not mean that everyone will agree with you, treat you kindly, or make wise decisions. Nor does it mean remaining in relationships that are unwholesome. It means developing the wisdom to understand circumstances accurately, respond appropriately, and maintain a peaceful, calm, serene, and content mind with joy, regardless of how others choose to behave.

The ultimate objective extends far beyond improving a marriage, friendship, family relationship, or professional interactions. It is the gradual development of 100% harmonious relationships with all beings, through the complete elimination of the internal causes of discontentedness.

Every relationship is an opportunity to learn. Every interaction is an opportunity to practice. Every wise decision is another step along The Path to Enlightenment.

Discover how transforming your own mind can transform your relationships —and ultimately lead to Living a Life of Harmony.

Harmony in Relationships: Developing Peaceful and Wholesome Relationships Through The Teachings of The Buddha

Relationships are among the most meaningful parts of human life, yet they are also among the circumstances through which anger, frustration, disappointment, loneliness, resentment, jealousy, attachment, worry, and other forms of discontentedness can become visible within the mind. We may deeply care for another person while still wanting them to behave differently. We may love someone while becoming attached to their attention, presence, affection, agreement, communication, or decisions. We may believe that peace within a relationship depends upon the other person changing, understanding us, cooperating with us, remaining close to us, or treating us according to the way we think they should.

Harmony in Relationships presents a considerably different way of understanding relationships through The Teachings of The Buddha.

Rather than beginning with the objective of changing other beings, the Practitioner learns to examine and train their own mind. Harmony in relationships is the ability to interact with other beings through wisdom, wholesome intentions, wise communication, and harmless actions while maintaining a peaceful, calm, serene, and content mind with joy. The development of harmony therefore does not depend upon creating a world in which every other being behaves according to the Practitioner’s preferences. It develops through the gradual elimination of craving, anger, and ignorance (unknowing of true reality) while generosity, loving-kindness, wisdom, and other wholesome qualities increasingly permeate the mind. As this purification progresses, discontentedness becomes less frequent and less intense. When purification is complete, the causes capable of producing discontentedness have been completely eliminated and discontentedness can no longer arise.

The Practitioner learns that two beings remain two individual lives. Each being makes their own decisions and experiences the results produced by those decisions. Closeness does not merge two people into one decision-maker, and love does not provide authority over another adult's life. The Practitioner is able to acquire information, communicate concerns, offer guidance when there is an open door, and make wise decisions concerning their own participation in a relationship, while recognizing that the other being remains responsible for their own decisions and results.

Harmony therefore does not mean that two people will always agree. It does not mean that another person will communicate in the preferred way, make the decision the Practitioner would make, remain physically close, accept guidance, or behave harmoniously in return. Nor does harmony require permanent participation in every relationship. Wisdom may indicate that participation should increase, decrease, change, or conclude. When the mind has developed the necessary wisdom, a relationship can end while the Practitioner continues practicing loving-kindness, respect, wise communication, and harmless conduct without developing anger, hatred, resentment, or revenge. The Teachings presented throughout this book and The Words of The Buddha series provide the wisdom needed to develop this ability.

Throughout this book, the Practitioner learns how The Universal Truth of Impermanence applies to every relationship and why craving for people and circumstances to be different or remain unchanged produces discontentedness. The reader learns how craving/desire/attachment influences relationships and how to investigate those cravings through Analysis of The Mind. Discontentedness becomes the Red Light revealing that something within the mind needs attention rather than evidence that another being has inserted an unwanted feeling into the Practitioner.

The book explores how expectations can become invisible agreements placed upon other beings, how advice and guidance can become attempted control, why disagreement does not require disharmony, and how anger, irritation, resentment, jealousy, and ill will influence communication and decisions. The Practitioner develops loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity through The Four Healthy Mental States, while learning wise communication, non-attachment, equality, generosity, and the meaning of True Love.

These Teachings are then applied throughout the practical relationships and circumstances of everyday life: relationships with children, friends, Teachers, Students, Non-Practitioners, life partners, coworkers, supervisors, employees, customers, and individuals encountered only briefly. The Practitioner learns how to guide children toward wisdom, choose wholesome friends and associates, select a life partner through wisdom before commitment, develop harmony within a shared life, and bring The Teachings into livelihood, leadership, employment, service, financial decisions, and ordinary daily participation.

The purpose of this book is therefore not simply to provide ideas about healthier relationships. It is to help the reader develop a life practice, based on the truth of The Teachings of The Buddha, that will actually produce harmony within all their relationships.

The Practitioner learns The Teachings accurately, reflects upon them carefully, practices them diligently, observes the results, and verifies their accuracy through direct experience, thereby cultivating the wisdom needed to develop harmony throughout their life.

When discontentedness arises, rather than immediately looking outward for someone to blame or something to change, the Practitioner learns to investigate the mind. What did the mind want? What did it expect? What was it attempting to preserve as permanent? What did it want another being to do differently? Through Right Mindfulness, Right Effort, meditation, Analysis of The Mind, and the continued practice of The Eight Fold Path, the underlying craving can gradually be identified and eliminated so there can be peace and joy.

Relationships therefore become something considerably greater than circumstances through which the Practitioner seeks companionship, affection, agreement, or support. They become continual opportunities for acquiring wisdom and purifying the mind. Another individual can disagree without causing the Practitioner’s discontentedness. Another person can make a different decision without possessing the ability to remove the Practitioner’s peace. A close relationship can change without eliminating True Love. Another being can experience success without jealousy being necessary. Participation in a relationship can end without hatred or resentment. The Practitioner gradually becomes less dependent upon other beings and changing circumstances for peace, calmness, serenity, contentedness, and joy as craving/desire/attachment and the other pollutions of mind are progressively eliminated. With complete purification of the mind, that dependency is eliminated entirely. The Enlightened mind no longer produces discontentedness in response to another being or changing circumstances and remains peaceful, calm, serene, and content with joy.

As the mind changes, the decisions being placed into relationships change as well. Politeness, kindness, friendliness, respect, honesty, generosity, loving-kindness, reliability, and wisdom increasingly replace harshness, bitterness, jealousy, deception, attempted control, and conceit. Over time, those decisions naturally influence the relationships and life the Practitioner experiences. Relationships increasingly become harmonious and blossom, wise association with wholesome people becomes easier to recognize, livelihood becomes another environment through which The Path is practiced, and the quality of daily life improves as the quality of the decision-maker’s mind improves.

The ultimate objective is the development of 100% harmonious relationships with all beings. This does not occur because every being in the world becomes wise, agreeable, respectful, honest, or Enlightened. It occurs through the gradual purification of the Practitioner’s own mind.

As craving, anger, and ignorance (unknowing of true reality)—described in greater detail through The Ten Fetters—are progressively eliminated, discontentedness becomes less frequent and less intense while peace, calmness, serenity, and contentedness with joy become increasingly stable. This gradual reduction of discontentedness is not the final objective. When purification is complete, craving, anger, and ignorance have been completely uprooted. The conditions capable of producing discontentedness no longer exist, and therefore discontentedness becomes impossible. The Enlightened mind is unconditioned and remains permanently peaceful, calm, serene, and content with joy regardless of the changing circumstances being experienced.

The Practitioner is therefore not merely learning how to create several better relationships. They are learning how relationships can become part of The Path to Enlightenment and how the same wisdom that transforms relationships can gradually transform their entire life.

The central question changes from:

“How can I get other people to change?”

to:

“What can I learn about my own mind through this relationship, and how can I train the mind so that I can participate through generosity, loving-kindness, and wisdom with True Love?”

Through learning, reflecting upon, practicing, and verifying The Teachings of The Buddha, the Practitioner can gradually develop peaceful and wholesome relationships, eliminate the causes of discontentedness, purify the mind, and make increasingly wise and harmless decisions. The Practitioner ultimately develops something considerably greater than harmony within individual relationships:

They are Living a Life of Harmony.

Continue Your Study with The Words of The Buddha

Harmony in Relationships focuses specifically on applying The Teachings of The Buddha to relationships and the training of the mind that supports harmony with all beings. Readers who would like to explore the complete framework of these Teachings in greater depth are encouraged to continue their study with the thirteen-volume book series:

The Words of The Buddha The Path to Enlightenment — Revealing The Hidden

This series provides a comprehensive study of The Teachings of The Buddha, including The Four Noble Truths, The Eight Fold Path, The Natural Laws of Existence, meditation, craving, The Six Sense Bases, The Natural Law of Kamma, The Four Stages of Enlightenment, and the many additional Teachings that support the development of a complete life practice and harmonious relationships.

Learn. Reflect. Practice. Verify for Yourself. Walk The Path with The Buddha.

THE WORDS OF THE BUDDHA 

The Path to Enlightenment

Revealing The Hidden

Volume 1

Developing a Life Practice: The Path That Leads to Enlightenment

Volume 2

Walking The Path with The Buddha

Volume 3

Foundation in The Teachings

Volume 4

Exploring The Path to Enlightenment

Volume 5

The First Stage of Enlightenment

(Stream-Enterer)

Volume 6

The Natural Law of Kamma

Volume 7

Breathing Mindfulness Meditation

Volume 8

The Foremost Householders

Volume 9

The Six Sense Bases

Volume 10

The Buddha’s Way

Volume 11

The Realms of Existence

Volume 12

Lowly Arts

Volume 13

Generosity

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