240 Global Ethics for Leadership
‘interconnectedness’ means “as long as you continue to breathe, I con-
tinue to be in”,^196 he confirms people in their ‘power of understanding
other people’s suffering’ and their ‘power of loving kindness’. In order
to understand other people’s needs and their suffering, we need to com-
passionately listen to their stories with empathy and mindfulness. Ac-
cording to Thich Nhat Hanh, his act can be thought of as an authentic
source of power. Authentic leadership requires ‘compassionate listen-
ing’ or ‘deep listening’ in order to understand others and win their hearts
and cooperation. The exercise of such power can assure that Buddhist
practices enable a true process of dialogue.
Moreover, the Buddhist approach of ‘seeing everything as it is’ rep-
resents a mindful mode of accepting things both similar to and different
from our own feelings and perceptions. It implies the acceptance of di-
versity, including different identities of others. In other words, the abil-
ity to welcome all facets of different identities including religion, lan-
guage and belief is a central precondition of dialogue. Differences
should be viewed as matters of beauty instead of problems. By simply
approaching differences without any prejudgements, the dialogue part-
ners should be able to exercise empathy with other people’s belief and
conviction. Putting this Buddhist teaching into practice can enable us to
sympathetically listen to what followers of other religions believe.
At the same time, it can be difficult to sympathise with others if we
cannot use our sympathic imagination, as it were putting ourselves in
other people’s shoes. By doing this, deep listening with empathy in the
process of dialogue, is supported by the following Buddhist teaching:
What is displeasing and disagreeable to me
is displeasing and disagreeable to the other too.
How can I inflict upon another196
Ellsberg, R. (Ed.) (2001) Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings New York:
Orbis Books, 55.