Communicating To Bring Us Together

This talk is part of a series that explores the five criteria of wise communication. Concord or harmony in speaking is a practice of mindfulness where you pause and ask yourself, Will what I am about to say bring us together or create separation? This, in combination with the other four criteria, brings an appropriate response to our communication.

Transcript

We've been exploring the Buddha's suggestions for communicating with others and I framed them as questions that we can ask ourselves as a way of getting immediate feedback you know to ask ourselves is what am I,

Is what I'm about to say true?

Can I deliver it in a way that's kind?

Will what I'm about to say be beneficial to myself,

To others?

Will it bring us together and is it the right time?

These five questions can be challenging to remember in situations where there's a difficult discussion.

You know these dharma teachings have a pretty high standard.

That's why we have to practice.

That's why we look at ourselves and work with ourselves and grow gradually,

Gradually over time learning to move in the direction where we can live a life of goodwill towards ourselves and others.

That takes time.

So today we're looking at is what I'm about to say going to bring concord?

We don't really use the word concord very much in our everyday communication with others.

The original meaning of concord from its latin and french roots means heart together.

Heart together is what I'm about to say.

Will it bring our hearts together?

To one heart,

To one mind.

So concord is a is kind of a state of of agreement of harmony.

It's speaking in a way with goodwill and friendliness,

Meta,

Meta.

So it's possible to have goodwill and to care for others without loving them.

The reference point for this is you know just kind of asking the question,

Is there goodwill or not?

And if there is no goodwill then there is work to be done right for us.

There's practice to be done internally and we're not trying to force ourselves to have goodwill.

You know if we see that you know if or if we interpret this as a sort of a moral obligation like oh I must have goodwill towards others.

It's fake and it's forced and it's a pretense.

It's not coming from our hearts.

It's not about bringing our hearts together.

So it's on the surface and it really won't benefit others.

You know when we first started these talks I shared with you the statement that in meditation we watch our mind and in the world we watch our speech.

And there is a relationship.

It's a reciprocal relationship between our mind and our speaking.

And the state of our mind often reflects,

It's reflected in how we speak.

The mind and what's happening in the mind influences our speaking.

And how we speak influences our mind.

You know if we are caught in something and we are thinking angry thoughts,

What comes out of our mouth is anger often or a kind of a tightness in our language.

And if we are speaking angrily we're using and reinforcing the tendency in the mind or the habit in the mind to sort of be angry.

And if we speak in a friendly way to ourselves or cutting ourselves some slack and being relaxed,

That reinforces the tendency to be relaxed,

To be friendly with ourselves,

To be easy with ourselves and others.

You know the very beginning of the Dhammapada says that all things are created by mind,

Led by mind,

Made by mind.

Speak and act with a tight mind and tightness comes out.

Speak and act with a friendly mind and friendliness comes out.

That's the power of the mind.

You know many of you are familiar with Viktor Frankl's book,

Man's Search for Meaning.

In it he said,

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others,

Giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in numbers but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man,

From a person,

Everything.

But one thing,

The last of the human freedoms,

To choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances,

To choose one's own way.

So in Buddhist practice,

This is what we're learning,

To choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances.

So these guiding questions,

You know,

Is what I'm about to say going to bring our hearts together?

And if the answer is no,

Then can we express as honestly as we can that truth,

In a sense?

Can I take responsibility for what is true within myself in that moment?

If what I'm about to say is not going to bring our hearts together,

Then maybe can I say,

I can't speak in a way right now that's going to bring harmony to this situation.

Maybe can we take a break and come back later?

I have to do this in my relationships.

You know,

Something that I've learned about myself is sometimes I'm just unable to speak in a way that brings me and the other person together.

And I make these requests,

This break,

Because the way that my mind works is sometimes I just can't see clearly,

Like in the moment of a conflict,

I just can't see clearly.

I freeze up and my words fumble and I'm not able to engage.

So I need a minute.

I need five minutes.

I maybe need an hour.

I may need a whole day to sort of process and learn to ask,

Well,

What am I feeling?

What am I actually feeling?

And what do I need?

You know,

Developing a vocabulary around feelings and needs has been ongoing for me.

You know,

I'm a beginner on the path of identifying feelings and needs.

Truly a beginner.

And I'm not always skilled at identifying them.

Like in the moment,

That can be tough.

So when I'm in a conversation and it's not really clear if the conversation is going in a way that brings us together,

Sometimes just saying what's true for me,

Like I really want this communication to land in a way that brings us together,

But I'm certain that I,

Like I'm uncertain.

I'm uncertain that I actually have the skill to do so,

But I care.

I care about the situation and these circumstances.

And I'm also triggered and I'm unsure.

So maybe,

Maybe we can take a break.

And so in that moment,

It's speaking to the truth of my direct experience and it supports staying connected to myself and it supports the intention to bring harmony.

Like in a way,

I see this particular aspect of speaking to bring harmony as aligning very much with my deepest intention.

My understanding of this spiritual path is that it involves deconstructing and reconstructing how we experience the world,

Including ourselves.

So the world,

Which is including my sense of self,

Is constructed by the way that we think,

And how we act.

So when we let go of what we've learned,

Of how we've learned to think about things,

Which can happen when we're meditating,

We can experience life differently.

And the reconstruction,

The reconstruction touches on what I think of as karma,

Our actions.

It involves transforming our motivations,

Our intentions,

Because they're crucial in causing us to experience the world in a certain way.

If we want to experience the world with non-harming,

With a certain wholesomeness,

We have to touch in and transform our motivations in the moment.

You know,

Buddhism teaches that if we're motivated by greed and hatred and delusion,

Then we're creating unwholesome karma and ultimately more suffering.

So someone who is motivated by these three poisons of greed,

Hatred,

And delusion lives in a very different world than somebody who's motivated by generosity and loving kindness and wisdom.

It has a very different spin.

And so by transforming our motivations,

Our intentions,

That determines how we relate to other people,

How we speak with other people.

And we come to experience the world very differently,

And our communication is a reflection on that.

Generally speaking,

Our whole world is kind of framed by splitting things up into two separate sides.

Yet on this Buddhist path,

This non-dual path,

We're learning that there are other ways of experiencing the world.

Non-duality literally means not two.

That two things that we've understood as separate from one another are in fact not separate at all.

They're so dependent upon each other that they are kind of in effect two sides of the same coin.

And that's relationship.

So speaking in a way that brings conquered is an expression of this not two,

One,

Or it can be.

So I think I'll stop here and take your comments and questions and I thank you for your attention and your consideration of this particular path factor,

This criteria of speaking.

Thank you.

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