The Art of Communicating Page 4
Don’t Exaggerate
The second part of Right Speech is to refrain from inventing and exaggerating. You want to speak about some little thing, but you exaggerate and make it very big. For example, someone has made a mistake, but you exaggerate as though it’s something many times worse. Sometimes when we’re speaking to ourselves, we make something seem very tragic to justify and even feed anger. There may be some truth in what you want to say, but you exaggerate what the other person has done, so you paint a wrong image of the other. This may seem harmless, but it takes you away from the truth and takes away the trust in a relationship.
Be Consistent
The third kind of incorrect speech is what we call in Vietnamese “forked tongue” or “double tongue.” It means you say something to one person, but when speaking about the same matter to another person you say something different as a way of gaining some advantage. You speak about the same situation but in conflicting ways. This causes division and can make a person or group think badly about the other person or group when there’s no basis for it. This can cause a lot of suffering on both sides and might even cause them to become enemies. Right Speech requires being true to your word and not changing the content for your own advantage or to portray yourself in a better light.
Use Peaceful Language
The fourth aspect of Right Speech is to refrain from speech that’s violent, condemning, abusive, humiliating, accusing, or judgmental.
The Four Criteria
In the time of the Buddha, people were caught by mental constructions and interpreted the teachings in ways that were not intended by the teacher. The Buddha and his students came up with four criteria that should be contained in any teaching. These four criteria are helpful today in evaluating whether we and others are using Right Speech and speaking the truth effectively. The four criteria are:
1. We have to speak the language of the world.
2. We may speak differently to different people, in a way that reflects how they think and their ability to receive the teaching.
3. We give the right teaching according to person, time, and place, just as a doctor prescribes the right medicine.
4. We teach in a way that reflects the absolute truth.
The First Criterion: Speak the Language of the World
The first criterion is to understand the worldly way of seeing things, the worldly view. Sometimes we have to use the kind of language that people speak and the way they view things. If you don’t use the language of the world, most people won’t understand what you mean, and you can communicate only with people who already think like you. This doesn’t mean you have to learn Vietnamese and Arabic, but rather that you have to speak in terms that people can understand, based on their daily experience of life.
For example, we are used to saying that the sky is “above” and the earth is “below.” When we sit here, we say that what’s above us is “up” and what’s below us is “down.” But for those who are sitting on the other side of the planet, our down is their up, and our up is their down. What is up and down for this corner of the planet is not up and down for another part of the planet. So “up and down” is a truth, but it’s a relative truth. We can use it as part of our common language, to communicate with each other, without needing to have an extended discussion of “up” and “down” each time we talk.
The Second Criterion: Speak According to the Understanding of the Person Listening
The second criterion says that we may have to speak to each person differently. This doesn’t contradict the element of Right Speech that says not to speak with a forked tongue (doublespeak). We need to keep the truthful content the same while being aware of the perspective and understanding of the person we’re speaking to, so others have an opportunity to really hear what’s being said. With one person you speak one way; with another person you have to speak a different way. You have to look deeply at the person to see how he or she perceives, and speak in a way that takes that into account, so others can understand what you say. If someone’s understanding is profound, you speak in a way that takes that into consideration.
One day someone asked the Buddha, “When that person passes away, which heaven do you think he will go to?” The Buddha answered that he might be born into this or that heavenly realm. Later another person asked the Buddha, “When that person dies, where will he go?” The Buddha answered, “He will not go anywhere.” Someone standing nearby asked the Buddha why he had given the two people two different answers. The Buddha replied that it depends on the person who asks. He said, “I have to speak according to the mind of the person who listens and the ability of that person to receive what I share.”
There’s a story of someone who gave a woman a pot of milk in the morning. At the end of the day, he came to get it back. During the day the milk had turned into butter and cheese. The man said, “But I gave you milk, and you gave me back butter and cheese.” So is milk the same as or different from the butter? It’s not the same, but it’s not different either.
To those with more profound understanding, you have to give a deeper answer, reflecting that nothing is permanent and everything is constantly changing. So the teaching you give and the way you speak depends on the degree of wisdom of the receiver and that person’s ability to understand what you say. You speak according to the background and the abilities of the person you’re speaking to.
The Third Criterion: Prescribe the Right Medicine for the Disease
The third criterion is to prescribe the right medicine for the disease. If you give someone the wrong medicine, that person could die. So to each you give a particular medicine. When you have attachment, craving, or despair, remember that you are your own teacher. You can listen to these strong emotions and communicate back the healing you need.
Don’t think that if you hear or read something that inspires you, you should then repeat it word for word. Think of how to make these truths you heard resonate with your own. Similarly, you also have to know the mind and the background of the person you’re speaking to. If you were to give another person exactly the teaching you heard, it might not be the appropriate teaching for that person. You have to adapt what you say to the other’s background. But what you say must also reflect the true teaching. So you use worldly language, but not just any worldly language. Your language has to be appropriate to the situation, while not straying from the truth.
Think about how we talk to children about death or violence in the world. Do we tell them the truth in a different way than we would an adult? One time when I was visiting a museum, I entered a room containing a mummified human body. A little girl was there looking at the dead person. After we both had stood there looking together for a while, with fear in her eyes she asked me something like, “Am I going to be lying dead on a table one day?” I breathed in and out and gave her the only answer that was appropriate for that situation: “No.” I hope that someday a wise parent or friend will be able to talk with her about the impermanence of all things, including our bodies and the deep teaching of the Buddha that nothing ever ceases to exist altogether, nothing goes from being existent to being nonexistent. But this was not the time or place for her to be told all that, so I gave her the best answer available under the circumstances, which was “no.”
Even with adults, we can vary what we say depending on how fragile we think they might be about a certain subject. We want to share information in a way that people can integrate and use later, even if not right away. This isn’t lying; it’s telling the truth in a skillful way. There was a man belonging to the Jain tradition who asked the Buddha whether human beings have a self. The Buddha could have answered that there is no self, but he kept silent. Then the Jain man asked, “Then do we have no self?” The Buddha still kept silent. Later Ananda asked the Buddha, “Why didn’t you say there is no self?” The Buddha said, “I know that he is caught in his view. If I were to say that there is no self, he would be lost and he would suffer a lot. So although ‘no sel
f’ is correct according to our teaching, it was better to keep silent.”
The Fourth Criterion: Reflect the Absolute Truth
The fourth criterion is the absolute truth, the most profound view of things, and it may be found in sentences such as “There is no separate self” or “There is no such thing as birth and death.” The absolute truth is correct; it is the closest thing to a description of the ultimate reality, but it can make people feel lost if they haven’t had a spiritual teacher who could skillfully convey its depths to them, in a way they could take in. So whenever we need to say something we know will be difficult for others to hear, we have to be humble and try to look more and more deeply to discover in what way we can talk about these things.
There are some absolute truths, such as that of no-birth and no-death, that are very difficult to grasp in our everyday way of thinking and everyday lives. But then if we are shown something simple, such as a cloud, we can grasp very easily that the cloud isn’t “born” and it doesn’t “die”; it simply changes form. We may think of these absolute truths as abstract, but they are visible all around us in the natural world if we look deeply or have a teacher or companion with whom we can talk about what we see.
If you use these four criteria, you will not be confused when you are reading or listening to something. They can also help you listen well to others and express yourself effectively in everyday life, whether in friendly conversation, when speaking to or listening in a group, or when reading a text, whether secular or religious. You will have a deep understanding of what is the truth in any given situation and how best to respond.
This training isn’t just about how we speak but also goes along with how we listen. So the focus is what happens not only with the mind and tongue, but also with the ear. When we listen more deeply and see more clearly, compassion arises, and we use mindful speech that reflects our sincere and caring intentions. Instead of speaking cruelly, we begin to listen with compassion.
When we have the ability to listen with compassion to the suffering of the other person, we will benefit as well. Our compassion makes us happy and peaceful. When we listen with compassion, we can understand things that we wouldn’t be able to understand if we were full of anger.
Listening deeply is a kind of looking deeply. You look not with your eyes but with your ears. When you look with your eyes, you can see the suffering. When you look with your ears, you can hear the vibration of that person’s words. In Vietnamese, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is called Quan The Am (in Chinese, Kwan Yin). Quan means to contemplate deeply; the means world; and am means sound. Quan The Am listens to all the sounds, all the suffering of the world. When you listen like that, compassion is born in you, and you can have peace. Please listen with great compassion. Even when you’re sad because of bad news, your compassion will soothe your agitation and make you more peaceful.
Help People Understand
On my last trip to India, I was invited to be the guest editor for one day at the Times of India, the largest daily paper in India. It was during the Gandhi commemoration days in October 2008. One day I was sitting with the regular editors in a meeting when news came in of a terrorist attack in Mumbai, near the Pakistan border, in which a lot of people had been killed.
The editors asked me, “If you were a journalist in our time, how would you report when there is so much bad news and so little good news. How should we be as journalists?” It’s a difficult question. Reporters have to report the news. But if journalists are writing only from the place of shock, fear, or outrage, they will report in a way that waters the fear and anger of the reader, possibly creating more violence. So what can we do when we receive such news?
I didn’t answer right away. I went back to my in-breath and out-breath, and I kept silent for a time, and they kept silent too. Then I said, “You have to tell the truth. But you have to report in such a way that we don’t water the seeds of fear, anger, and vengeance in people. So you have to sit as a practitioner and look deeply, and ask, ‘Why would someone do violence to innocent people?’” When you’ve looked deeply, you will see that those who do violence have a wrong perception of the situation. They’re so sure their perception is the truth. And they may think that if they also die in the explosion, they will go directly to heaven to join God.
Everybody wants to live; nobody wants to die. But they may think that by killing others and dying themselves they are doing the work of God. They think that those on the other side are the enemies of God. You can see that is wrong thinking, and so you have great compassion for them. For whoever has such a view, life is very dark and he suffers a lot. There are many wrong perceptions everywhere. So long as those wrong perceptions persist, the number of terrorists will only increase. It will be very difficult to find and control them all.
If one terrorist group is violently destroyed, another will emerge; it’s endless. So I told the editors, “When you report on terrorist acts, use your compassion and deep understanding. Explain the story in such a way that the reader doesn’t become enraged and perhaps become another terrorist.”
We can tell the truth, but we must help people understand. When people understand, their anger will lessen. They don’t lose hope, they know what to do and what not to do, what to consume and what not to consume in order not to continue this kind of suffering. So my message that morning was that we should reflect and discuss events in a way that will not increase the despair and the anger in people. Instead, we can help them to understand why things happen, so their insight and compassion increase. We can make a big difference with the practice of looking deeply. The solution isn’t to hide the truth.
Using Right Speech in Daily Life
The four trainings in Right Speech remind us every day to use words that express nondiscrimination, forgiveness, understanding, support, and love. It’s very liberating to be able to say or write something using compassionate speech. Speaking in this way is as healing for the speaker as it is for the person being spoken to. These four trainings also remind us that anything we say which contains poisons, discrimination, and hate will make us suffer and make others suffer. It’s a simple equation: wrong speech causes ill-being. Right Speech brings about well-being and healing. Every day we can say something that has the capacity to heal and help people. A grown-up can do this. A child can do this. A businessperson, a politician, or a teacher can do this. We don’t need to wait for a special moment. We can stop what we are doing right now and send an e-mail that contains Right Speech, and we can relieve the suffering inside us and the suffering in others right away.
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The Six Mantras of Loving Speech
When we have the impression that we’re all alone and nobody supports us, we can remember that it’s only a perception. It’s not accurate. Think of a tree standing outside right now. The tree is supporting us with beauty, freshness, and oxygen for us to breathe. That kind of support is also a kind of love. The fresh air outside, the plants that feed us, and the water that flows over our hands from the tap all support us.
There are many ways that people can support us and love us without actually saying, “I love you.” You may know people who have never said, “I love you,” but you know they love you. When I was ordained as a novice monk, I had a teacher who I knew loved me deeply, but he never said, “I love you.” That is the traditional way. If one pronounced the words “I love you,” it seemed that some of the sacredness was lost. Sometimes we feel very grateful, but we want to express our gratefulness in ways other than simply saying, “thank you.” Look for the many ways people communicate their love without saying it. Maybe, like the tree, they are supporting you in other ways.
It’s also true that the people you love may not know you love them. Sometimes we want to tell someone how much we care, but we don’t know the words to say it so that person will understand how we feel.
The Six Mantras are six sentences that embody loving speech and let people know that you see them, you understand them, and
you care for them. In Buddhism we call these sentences “mantras.” They’re a kind of magic formula. When you pronounce them, you can bring about a miracle, because happiness becomes available right away.
As with each practice, you begin with mindful breathing to bring about your true presence. Then you come to the other person in mindfulness, committed to the practice of compassionate communication. You may want to breathe in and out three times before you say the mantra. We need those three breaths in and out. This will make you calm, and your calm will be communicated to the other person. Then, when you go to another person, you know you will be fresh, you will have peace, and you can offer those things to the other person.
If you want the mantra to work, you have to breathe in mindfully first and become fresh before you pronounce it. You look into the other person’s eyes, and you say these short sentences. A mantra may contain as few as four words, but in these words you are able to be fully there for the person you love.
The First Mantra
The first mantra is: “I am here for you.” This is the best gift you can give a loved one. Nothing is more precious than your presence. No matter how expensive the things you buy for someone else, they’re not as precious as your true presence. That wonderful presence is fresh, solid, free, and calm, and you offer it to your loved ones to increase their happiness and your own happiness. “I am here for you.”