Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People

How to Learn from Your Troublesome Buddhas

By: Mark Westmoquette

Narrated by: Stephen Perring

Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

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 behavior 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.

©2021 Mark Westmoquette (P)2021 Watkins

Realistic Situations

This author's honesty and the offered solutions that are truly most helpful to to us are what stood out.

A must read for everyone

We all have troublesome Buddhas in our lives. Everyone can take something away from reading Zen and the Art of Dealing with Difficult People. Mark draws from both personal experience and the stories of others in describing how we may also be able to improve how we react and deal with difficult people. I find I am pausing and looking at the difficult people in my life in a more mindful, compassionate way since listening to this audiobook. As Mark states, our troublesome Buddhas should be looked on as our teachers. They can help us look at ourselves differently as we become more mindful of those who have “pushed our buttons” in possibly just minor or more harmful ways.