Talk talk

I have realised there has been a painfully long absence since my last post, I'm sure your lives have been bleak and miserable without them. I know that most of the people who read this also have their own blogs so I'm sure you can sympathise. There is a point at which inertia overwhelms. The effort to blog becomes overwhelmed by the feeling that I have nothing to say (if only that were true!). But then, the other day I heard one of my favourite rabbis give a drash, a teaching, about exactly this phenomenon, although he was talking about talking. The message of his lesson was that exactly when talking has come to an end, exactly when dialogue grinds to a painful, crushing halt, that is the time to open your mouth and continue to speak. So that's what I'm gonna do.

In Chinese medicine every orifice is seen as an opening, or vent, to an associated organ and it is the mouth that is the orifice of the  Heart, specifically, the tongue. The condition of our spirit, or Shen , that effects our ability to express ourselves verbally (why else is an important conversation between you and your closest friend called a 'heart-to-heart'?).

My first thought about this is that "man is not meant to be alone". Men and women are social creatures. We live in a highly socialised structure where there are a million and one ways to communicate. And while our methods of communication have multiplied beyond counting the value and meaning of our communication is not something that is often communicated about! As the Dalai Lama said,

"We’ve been all the way to the moon and back.

But we have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour.

We built more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication."

So what does talking that is good for the heart sound like? Is it a matter of dissonance or harmony? Is it language that flatters and placates? Is it brutal honesty? Both Judaism and Buddhism place a high value on speech that is 'Right'. Right Speech is one of the eight aspects of the eightfold path, which leads to the end of suffering. Judaism talks about abstaining from Lashon Hara (lit. Evil Tongue). Both of these religions highlight some qualities of how we can use speech in an ethical fashion.

Abstain from lying about another person. But also, avoid talking about others in any context. Although one might expect only a lie to cause harm, if we praise another it can make others feel envious towards them or encourage them to call into doubt our positive opinions about that person ("they can't be that good"). Every Organ/Element has an associated taste. In small amounts these tastes benefit the organ. However when in a pathological state the Organ will crave an abundance of the specific taste. The taste associated with the Heart is  bitterness and in Chinese Herbal Medicine many heart tonics contain bitter ingredients. This got me thinking - how often do we speak bitter words and what are we expressing about our expectations when we do so.

A Chasidic teaching reads: "The Rabbi of Kobryn taught: When a person suffers he should not say 'That's bad!' Nothing that G-d imposes on man is bad. But it is alright to say 'That's bitter!', for among medicines there are some that are made with bitter herbs". A secular example of this teaching is the saying "everything happens for a reason". Any experience we go through no matter how uncomfortable or painful or 'unfair' is an experience we can take meaning from. It can teach us something about ourselves and our world. In this way bitterness can be used 'medicinally' to open our heart to the world around us and a deeper knowledge of who we are. Conversely 'becoming bitter' about our circumstances can close the heart and close us off to opportunity or joy, the emotion of the Heart organ in balance. Another Chasisidic teacher, Rabbi Moshe, said: "In this day and age the greatest devotion - greater than learning and praying - consists in accepting the world exactly as it happens to be". If bitterness is a denial of reality, acceptance is an embrace. 

Regarding speech with others, Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching,  said, "Deep listening is the foundation of Right Speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we'll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person". Listening deeply is not so easy! We are all (or is it just me?) fascinated with our own stories. How often do we offer a "oh yeah that happened to me" as a response to others' stories, or a "I know just what you mean, that happened to me too"? Often we listen only until we have 'solved' the 'problem' being presented by another and then present them proudly with that solution, sometimes even interrupting their thought process as we do so. Obviously they would be mad to ignore our enlightened views but that's exactly what they do. The next time we see them the same stuff is happening. If only they had used our perfect solution! Nancy Klein in Time to Think talks extensively about the power of listening without contributing. Her belief is that everyone has their own 'solution' to their 'problems'. They just need to be prompted to think about and around their 'stuff' and given the time to think thoroughly, without interruption. 

Pasted from <http://xkcd.com/1089/>

The Heart in Chinese Medicine is the place of perfect still awareness. In fact it is the yin of stillness that then leads the heart's outward yang activity. If the Heart is not able to rest in stillness it becomes fraught and over full. And yet silence between people, especially in our extraverted Western culture can be interpreted as socially incompetency. Not that sitting with another's negative emotion is always comfortable. If someone is miserable or angry it is hard not to attempt to 'cheer them up' or get them to 'look on the bright side'. However the theory of yin and yang tells us though that no state can persist indefinitely. Allowing a state to run its full course can sometimes be all that is necessary; where as attempting to reframe someone's experience simply adds fuel to the fire - what we resist persists!

In order to be still enough to listen to another person's whirlwind universe it helps to be able to still our own hearts and simply to observe with compassion and listen with genuine interest. An exercise to clear the ears out and temporarily still the monkey chatter mind is as follows:

Beating the Golden drum

Pull the bottom lobe of you ears up and against the ear holes of both ears with your thumbs. Fold the top lobes of your ears over the bottom lobes and hold closed with the index fingers. Beat the middle fingers against the index fingers creating a tinny beating in the ears.

Continue for 30 seconds to a minute while breathing deeply. 

Listen perfectly to the sounds of the cosmos (including your fascinating friends)!