Three questions about anyone

In the 1940s a Japanese businessman named Yoshimoto Ishin, who'd practiced a severe form of Buddhist self-examination, built a version that anyone could do. He called it Naikan, looking inside, and it consists of three questions, asked about one person at a time, over a specific period.

What did I receive from this person? What did I give to this person? What trouble did I cause this person?

That's all. Notice what isn't on the list: what trouble did this person cause me? Yoshimoto left it off on purpose. He said we've already spent our whole lives asking that one and have it memorized. The other three, we've never asked.

In its full form, Naikan is a week-long retreat: you sit behind a screen for fifteen hours a day, working through the three questions about your mother, then your father, then each person in your life, year by year. Interviewers come every hour or two and ask what you've found. People come out of it changed, often weeping, usually with an overwhelming sense of how much they've been given.

The daily version takes ten minutes, and it's a key for anyone. Pick one person. Ask the three questions about today, or this week, and write the honest answers. The first list is always longer than you expected. The third is always more uncomfortable than you'd like.

It belongs in Awareness because it's attention trained on the one direction we never look: inward, at our own debts. It rhymes with the gratitude practice from day seventy-five and the two ledgers from day six, and goes a step further than either.

Vault Human points to Naikan centers for the retreat, which exist in Japan and a few in the West. The three questions are free.