How to Disagree Like a Buddha

<p>The other day someone had posted a comment on a FB post I made and she said, “Please unfriend me. We obviously have different beliefs.”</p><p>And this really stood out to me because I thought it was so...immature to not want to see differing opinions.</p><p>But it’s quite pervasive these days, right?</p><p>So I replied, “Actually, we aren’t friends on Facebook, but if we <i><strong>were</strong></i> <strong>you</strong> are always welcome to do so. But I want to invite you to consider that unfriending people just because they disagree with you might not be the best practice if you want to grow and learn as a human. I think there is a lost art of disagreeing, and when we are open to new ideas and people who think differently it allows us an opportunity to expand what we know.”</p><p>Suffice it to say there were crickets after that, but I’m so curious how many people out there would agree with me, and how many think we should just avoid contact with those who disagree with us.</p><p>So today I wanted to talk about how to disagree with someone, because I think that as a whole we sort of suck at it. Not just around politics or religion, but lifestyles and other personal choices as well.</p><p>Believe it or not, it is possible to still love someone who wildly disagrees with you.</p><p>You don’t have to get pissed off. You don’t have to hate them.</p><p>So why is it so <strong>hard</strong>?</p><p>What we often see instead is people having a really hard time even <strong>listening</strong> to different opinions... and an even <strong>harder</strong> time doing so without trying to <strong>change</strong> each other’s minds.</p><p>It’s easier to do this with smaller things like your favorite beach, favorite food, favorite multipitch alpine route, fave movie, saying “snow machine” vs “snowmobile.”</p><p>We’re able to have people disagree and still say, “Alright, I love you anyway...even though you’re totally wrong about that.”</p><p>But other things are much much harder, especially around politics or religion or other