The Art of Communicating Read online

  If I am free of needing a mobile phone, it’s because I carry mindfulness with me, like a guardian angel on my shoulder. The angel is always with me when I practice. It helps me be unafraid of whatever suffering or pain arises. It’s much more important to keep your mindfulness with you than to keep your mobile phone. You think that you’re safe when carrying your phone. But the truth is that mindfulness will do much more than a phone to protect you, to help you suffer less, and to improve your communication.

  Come Back

  The quiet of nonthinking and nontalking gives us the space to truly listen to ourselves. We don’t have to try to get away from our suffering. We don’t have to cover up what is unpleasant in us. In fact, we try to be there for ourselves, to understand, so that we can transform.

  Please do come back home and listen. If you don’t communicate well with yourself, you cannot communicate well with another person. Come back again and again and communicate lovingly with yourself. That is the practice. You have to go back to yourself and listen to the happiness you may have in this moment; listen to the suffering in your body and in your mind, and learn how to embrace it and bring relief.

  Communicating with the Body

  As long as we have mindfulness with us, we can breathe mindfully throughout the day as we go about our daily activities. But our mindfulness will be stronger and we’ll get more healing and communicate more successfully if we take the time to pause and sit quietly for a few moments. When a newly freed Nelson Mandela came to France for a visit, a journalist asked him what he would most like to do. He said, “Sit down and do nothing.” Since his release from prison and his official entry into politics, he hadn’t had any time to just enjoy sitting. We should make time to sit, even if it’s for only a few minutes a day, because sitting is a pleasure.

  Whenever we’re restless and don’t know what to do, that is a good time to sit down. It’s good to sit when we’re peaceful too, as a way of nurturing a habit and practice of sitting. When we stop and sit, we can begin right away to follow our in-breath and out-breath. Immediately, we can enjoy breathing in and breathing out, and everything gets a little bit better because the present moment becomes available to us.

  Breathe in a way that gives you pleasure. When you sit and breathe mindfully, your mind and body finally get to communicate and come together. This is a kind of miracle because usually the mind is in one place and the body in another. The mind is caught in the details of your projects to be done today, your sorrow about the past, or your anxiety about the future. Your mind isn’t anywhere near your body.

  When you breathe in mindfully, there is a happy reunion between body and mind. This doesn’t take any fancy technique. Just by sitting and breathing mindfully, you’re bringing your mind home to your body. Your body is an essential part of your home. When you spend many hours with your computer, you may forget entirely that you have a body until it’s too achy, stiff, or tense for you to ignore. You need to take breaks and return to your body before it gets to that point.

  To bring more awareness to the connection between body and mind, you can say to yourself:

  Breathing in, I’m aware of my body.

  Breathing out, I release all the tension in my body.

  Take Yourself for a Walk

  Mindful walking is a wonderful way to bring together body and mind. It also allows you the additional opportunity to communicate with something outside yourself that is nourishing and healing: the earth. When you take a step with full awareness that you are taking a step on the ground and the earth, there is no distinction between body and mind. Your body is your breathing. Your body is your feet. Your body is your lungs. And when you are connected with body, feet, breath, and lungs, you are home.

  Every step brings you home to the here and the now, so you can connect with yourself, your body, and your feelings. That is a real connection. You don’t need a device that tells you how many friends you have or how many steps you’ve walked or how many calories you’ve burned.

  When you walk mindfully, integrate your breath with each step and focus on your foot connecting with the ground. You’re aware that you’re making a step, and you stop thinking altogether. When you think, you get lost in your thinking. You don’t know what’s going on in your body, in your feelings, or in the world. If you think while you walk, you’re not really walking.

  Instead, focus your attention on your breath and your step. Be aware of your foot, its movement, and the ground you’re touching. While you focus your attention on making the step, you are free, because in that time your mind is only with the step you are making. Your mind is no longer carried off into the future or the past. You take one step, and you are free.

  While you walk, you can say to yourself, I have arrived. I am home. These words are not a mere declaration or an affirmation practice. They are a realization. You don’t need to run anywhere. Many of us have run all our lives. Now we get to live life properly.

  Home is the here and the now, where all the wonders of life are already available, where the wonder that is your body is available. You can’t arrive fully in the here and the now unless you invest your whole body and mind into the present moment. If you haven’t arrived one hundred percent, stop where you are and don’t take another step. Stay there and breathe until you’re sure you have arrived one hundred percent. Then you can smile a smile of victory. It’s probably best to do that only when you are enjoying mindful walking alone; if you are around other people, you may create a traffic jam.

  You don’t need an app or an outsider to tell you whether you have arrived. You will know you have arrived because you will recognize that you’re comfortable being. When you walk from the parking lot to your office, go home in each step. Recover yourself and connect with yourself during every step. No matter where you’re going, you can walk as a free person on this planet Earth and enjoy every step.

  Walking on the Earth Heals Our Alienation

  Many of us live in a way that alienates us from the earth and from our own bodies. Most of us live very isolated from each other. We humans can get extremely lonely. We’re separated not just from the earth and from each other but from our own selves. We spend many hours every day forgetting we have bodies. But if we begin to practice breathing mindfully and listening to the body, we can also begin to look deeply and see that the earth is all around us. We touch the earth, and we are no longer alienated from our own bodies or from the body of the earth.

  We commonly think of the earth as our “environment,” but looking more deeply, we see that the earth is a wonderful living reality. Often, when we feel alone, we forget that we can connect directly with the earth. When we bring mindfulness to our steps, these steps can bring us back in touch with our own bodies and with the body of the earth. These steps can rescue us from our alienation.

  Connecting to Our Suffering

  When we begin to breathe mindfully and listen to our bodies, we become aware of feelings of suffering that we’ve been ignoring. We hold these feelings in our bodies as well as our minds. Our suffering has been trying to communicate with us, to let us know it is there, but we have spent a lot of time and energy ignoring it.

  When we begin breathing mindfully, feelings of loneliness, sadness, fear, and anxiety may come up. When that happens, we don’t need to do anything right away. We can just continue to follow our in-breath and our out-breath. We don’t tell our fear to go away; we recognize it. We don’t tell our anger to go away; we acknowledge it. These feelings are like a small child tugging at our sleeves. Pick them up and hold them tenderly. Acknowledging our feelings without judging them or pushing them away, embracing them with mindfulness, is an act of homecoming.

  The Suffering of Our Ancestors

  We know that the suffering inside us contains the suffering of our fathers, our mothers, and our ancestors. Our ancestors may not have had a chance to get in touch with the practice of mindfulness, which could help them transform their suffering. That is why they have transmitte
d their unresolved suffering to us. If we are able to understand that suffering and thereby transform it, we are healing our parents and our ancestors as well as ourselves.

  Our suffering reflects the suffering of the world. Discrimination, exploitation, poverty, and fear cause a lot of suffering in those around us. Our suffering also reflects the suffering of others. We may be motivated by the desire to do something to help relieve the suffering in the world. How can we do that without understanding the nature of suffering? If we understand our own suffering, it will become much easier for us to understand the suffering of others and of the world. We may have the intention to do something or be someone that can help the world suffer less, but unless we can listen to and acknowledge our own suffering, we will not really be able to help.

  Listening Deeply

  The amount of suffering inside us and around us can be overwhelming. Usually we don’t like to be in touch with it because we believe it’s unpleasant. The marketplace provides us with everything imaginable to help us run away from ourselves. We consume all these products in order to ignore and cover up the suffering in us. Even if we’re not hungry, we eat. When we watch television, even if the program isn’t very good, we don’t have the courage to turn it off, because we know that when we turn it off we may have to go back to ourselves and get in touch with the suffering inside. We consume not because we need to consume but because we’re afraid of encountering the suffering inside us.

  But there is a way of getting in touch with the suffering without being overwhelmed by it. We try to avoid suffering, but suffering is useful. We need suffering. Going back to listen and understand our suffering brings about the birth of compassion and love. If we take the time to listen deeply to our own suffering, we will be able to understand it. Any suffering that has not been released and reconciled will continue. Until it has been understood and transformed, we carry with us not just our own suffering but also that of our parents and our ancestors. Getting in touch with the suffering that has been passed down to us helps us understand our own suffering. Understanding suffering gives rise to compassion. Love is born, and right away we suffer less. If we understand the nature and the roots of our suffering, the path leading to the cessation of the suffering will appear in front of us. Knowing there is a way out, a path, brings us relief, and we no longer need to be afraid.

  Suffering Brings Happiness

  Understanding suffering always brings compassion. If we don’t understand suffering, we don’t understand happiness. If we know how to take good care of suffering, we will know how to take good care of happiness. We need suffering to grow happiness. The fact is that suffering and happiness always go together. When we understand suffering, we will understand happiness. If we know how to handle suffering, we will know how to handle happiness and produce happiness.

  If a lotus is to grow, it needs to be rooted in the mud. Compassion is born from understanding suffering. We all should learn to embrace our own suffering, to listen to it deeply, and to have a deep look into its nature. In doing so, we allow the energy of love and compassion to be born. When the energy of compassion is born, right away we suffer less. When we suffer less, when we have compassion for ourselves, we can more easily understand the suffering of another person and of the world. Then our communication with others will be based on the desire to understand rather than the desire to prove ourselves right or make ourselves feel better. We will have only the intention to help.

  Understanding Our Own Suffering Helps Us Understand Others

  I know a woman from Washington, D.C., who at one time planned to commit suicide because she couldn’t see any way out of the suffering she was feeling. She had no hope. She had a very difficult relationship with her husband, and also with their three children. She had a friend who wanted her to listen to one of my talks on deep listening and loving speech. She refused because she was Catholic and she thought that listening to a Buddhist teaching meant she wasn’t being true to her faith.

  On the night she planned to kill herself, she telephoned her friend to say good-bye. Her friend said, “Before you kill yourself, come say good-bye to me. Take a taxi.” She came, and when she got there, her friend asked her, as a favor, to listen to the tape before she killed herself. Reluctantly she said, “All right, before dying I’ll satisfy your wish.”

  After listening to the tape, she was curious and decided to go to a mindfulness retreat. At the retreat, she began to really listen to her own suffering. Before that, she had thought the only way to end her suffering was to kill herself. It was too painful to listen. But she learned how to stay with her breath so she could be with her suffering. She found that she had created a lot of wrong perceptions and had nurtured a lot of anger. She had thought that her husband and her family had created all her suffering, but now she saw that she was co-responsible for her suffering. She had thought that her husband didn’t suffer, that he just made her suffer. But now her understanding was quite different, and she was able to see the suffering in her husband. This was quite an achievement. When you see the suffering inside yourself, you can see the suffering in the other person, and you can see your part, your responsibility, in creating the suffering in yourself and in the other person.

  The night when she came back from the retreat, she came and sat close to her husband. This was something very new, coming and sitting near him. She sat for a long time, and then she began to talk. She said, “I know you have suffered so much during the past many years. I couldn’t help you. I made the situation worse. It wasn’t my intention to make you suffer. It was just because I didn’t understand you. I didn’t see the suffering inside you. Tell me about your difficulties. Please help me understand.” She was able to use this kind of loving speech. Her husband began to cry like a baby, because for so many years she hadn’t talked to him in a loving way. Their relationship had been very beautiful in the beginning. But it had become filled with resentment and arguments and lacked any real communication. That night began their journey to reconciliation. Two weeks later, the couple came with their children to tell me this story.

  Loving Yourself Is the Basis for Compassion

  We tend to think we already know and understand our loved ones very well, but that may not be so. If we haven’t understood our own suffering and our own perceptions, how can we understand the suffering of another person? We shouldn’t be too sure that we understand everything about the other person. We have to ask, “Do I understand myself enough? Do I understand my suffering and its roots?”

  Once you have some understanding and insight into your own suffering, you begin to be better at understanding and communicating with someone else. If you can’t accept yourself—if you hate yourself and get angry with yourself—how can you love another person and communicate love to him or her?

  Self-understanding is crucial for understanding another person; self-love is crucial for loving others. When you’ve understood your suffering, you suffer less, and you are capable of understanding another person’s suffering much more easily. When you can recognize the suffering in the other person and see how that suffering came about, compassion arises. You no longer have the desire to punish or blame the other person. You can listen deeply, and when you speak there is compassion and understanding in your speech. The person with whom you’re speaking will feel much more comfortable, because there is understanding and love in your voice.

  Coming home to ourselves to understand our suffering and its roots is the first step. Once we understand our suffering and how it came about, we’re in a position to communicate with others in such a way that they also suffer less. Our relationships depend on the capacity of each of us to understand our own difficulties and aspirations and those of others.

  When you can truly come home to yourself and listen to yourself, you can profit from every moment given you to live. You can enjoy every moment. With good internal communication facilitated by mindful breathing, you can begin to understand yourself, understand your suffering, and unders
tand your happiness. Knowing how to handle suffering, you know at the same time how to produce happiness. And if you’re truly happy, we all profit from your happiness. We need happy people in this world.

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  The Keys to Communicating with Others

  As you connect with yourself, you begin connecting more deeply with other people. Without the first step, the second step isn’t possible. Don’t neglect to reserve some time alone each day for communicating with yourself.

  All of us still have misperceptions and suffering. When we communicate with others, we should be aware that the suffering we have yet to heal and our perceptions are also there. If we can be aware of our in-breath and out-breath, we will remember that the one goal of compassionate communication is to help others suffer less. If we remember this, we’ve already succeeded. We’re already contributing to more joy and less suffering.

  Saying Hello

  It’s helpful to remember at the beginning of every communication with another person that there is a Buddha inside each of us. “The Buddha” is just a name for the most understanding and compassionate person it’s possible to be. You may call it something else if you wish, like wisdom or God. We can breathe, smile, and walk in such a way that this person in us has a chance to manifest.

  Where I live in Plum Village, every time you meet someone on your way somewhere, you join your palms and bow to him or to her with respect, because you know that there is a Buddha inside that person. Even if that person isn’t looking or acting like a Buddha, the capacity for love and compassion is in him or her. If you know how to bow with respect and freshness, you can help the Buddha in him or her to come out. To join your palms and bow like this isn’t mere ritual. It’s a practice of awakening.