Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I learned this morning that my brother, my only sibling died.  The police officer on the phone was gentle and kind.  I knew right away when I saw the ID number on the phone.  He was skilled and practicing right speech, and as far as I'm concerned everyone I've talked to was speaking rightly, because they were trying to comfort me, and anyway I wasn't paying much attention to the words, just their intentions.  Right speech in such a case is just calling back and letting me know they care and are thinking about me.

I now will fly far away to try to arrange burial or cremation, and again, the words won't matter.  My grief is beyond words, inexpressible, and for a while there will be little comfort.  This was a dear man who had a tragic life and deserved better.  He stopped speaking to me 13 years ago, though we exchanged cards on birthdays and at Christmas.  His silence was a kind of speech, and came with a long letter to me saying he loved me but would not be communicating again.  I waited.  He'd stopped speaking to me once before for two years when our father died.  I respected his wishes, prayed for him, and tried not to take it personally.  I'll never know why he cut off communication with any of the family.  Some of my aunts and uncles attempted to call him, but no picking up. 

Now he will go to his grave a complete mystery to me.  But maybe everyone is a mystery to everyone else.  There will be no final words or healing, as there was when my Dad was dying.  My brother lived alone and died alone.  It breaks my heart. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

One week before an election there is a ton of wrong speech floating around.  I don't watch TV, so that buffers me, and when I get the flyers in the mail they go straight into the trash.  I like to hear from friends about candidates in local elections, and I read some of what is available, but not from the candidates, but from League of Women Voters and assessments that are more detached or show both sides' arguments. 

I try to assume everyone's intention is good.  I'm not out to see behind a facade.  In their language and that of their advocates, I'm looking for common sense.  Sounds easy, but it's as old fashioned as depression glassware.  So if it's a local candidate talking about international or national issues, I'm repelled.  I mean, I just want better lighting and safe streets and the usual.  I don't need someone to take a stance about free trade or immigration reform, unless he/she is in a position to affect that problem. 

Are they demonizing the other side?  I like to see them talking about themselves and their ideas, not putting the focus on the adversary.  That is usually a smoke screen.

And I'm a bit blaise, because the structure they are attempting to insert themselves into is so much stronger and more rigid than they think.  What's likely to be changed is them, not the government they represent.  Yet, I'm hopeful every election, because I've seen nobodies rise up and discover their greatness, even take stands against the majority of their party or backers.  I had a political science professor long ago who said in England they call the subject "the art of politics", not science.  He saw it as a grand drama of emotions and feelings and hopes and dreams.  Not rational, not even close, but very reliably human. 

I watch for the blaming and side stepping and overblown rhetoric.  And then I vote for the other guy.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In our Buddhist study group, our teacher often reminds us not to ask "why" questions.  She is including not asking ourselves even, probably because we get caught up in analyzing instead of feeling, and detach ourselves from our moment to moment experience.  Asking another person why is even more loaded, and when I've made that mistake, or someone's asked me why I did something, I've gotten lost in the story, and not been satisfied with the answer.

 I had a friend, many years ago, with whom I had an argument, and we stopped seeing each other.  When she suggested we meet halfway between the towns where we lived, I agreed, and felt closer to her when she explained how she now realized, through the help of her therapist, that she wasn't angry at me, but that somehow I represented her mother in some nebulous way.  We parted amicably, and I soon moved out of state, but when I returned seven years later, and ran into her on the street, we set a date to have dinner and catch up.  She asked me why we hadn't kept track of each other.  I reminded her of our dinner right before I left and what she told me.  She didn't remember the dinner at all and was upset that in my version she blamed herself.  It had never happened, she stated.  Needless to say, we've not met since. 

We would have been better off avoiding the whys both times.  The issue had been simple.  Many times she came and stayed with me and my family for the weekend, and I prepared meals and welcomed her.  But when I visited her, the refrigerator was empty, I was on my own for all meals, and the last time she announced she was going out to dinner that night, though  I'd come up to see her.  She didn't invite me or apologize.  I told her the relationship seemed uneven.  She expected attention when she came to me, but ignored me when I saw her.  It didn't seem fair.  Her why assumed if she gave an excellent reason, I would feel better.  But I didn't.  The whys obscured some real straight talk that needed to happen but didn't.

When a friend of mine killed herself, I worked myself up into a frenzy of whys.  Hers and mine.  A few days later another friend asked me "What makes you think you had the power to save her?"  I stopped compulsively analyzing and let myself feel the grief.  She was gone; I was devastated.  End of story.  The story could not be rewritten.  I knew some of the whys automatically, but I would never know them all.  That knowledge of "don't know" is hard to sit with.  But life has it's mysteries, and we cannot find any answers through questions but through experiences, observations and being a witness to our own mindstream.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Lately, I've upset several friends by not replying to an email or text quickly enough.  I have a practice that I don't respond to email for twenty four hours, though with texting I do respond fast if I'm not busy, hear the ping and have my cell phone nearby.  It's not exactly wrong speech I'm practicing, it's slow speech.  I don't carry my cell phone on my person unless I'm out and might need to be available, and if I'm driving, it has to wait.  At home my phone may be upstairs in my bedroom, and I'm downstairs or outside or in my studio.  I can't even hear it.  When I got the IPhone, I swore not to be chained to it.  And I only check my email once a day unless I'm expecting some communication. 

This detachment annoys some friends, and then there are the friends who are offended I'm not on Facebook.  I feel like I'm fighting for meaningful communication.  To them it feels like I'm hostile, uninterested in them or feeling superior.  I've tried explaining my point of view.  I would rather have a phone conversation or be in the same room at least some of the time.  Virtual reality doesn't do anything for me.  I'm sure they're grumbling about what a Luddite I am, and so old fashioned.  I can only pray they hang in there with me.  I respond to everything, just not instantly.  I do have fears that I will lose friends because of my stance, but if all I'll have otherwise is a Facebook page to read, I feel like I've lost any connection already.

I wonder if others are having this struggle.  Slow speech is more careful, but maybe I become less spontaneous.  My language may be duller.  Even I doubt at times I'm worth the effort.  But at least I don't have 500 "friends" that look good on paper, but I barely know.  I prefer deep to wide.  It probably is just a matter of taste.  But it's a real divide.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I can lose my right speech really easily when describing myself.  My Buddhist teacher caught me at it today during our monthly study group.  I said was blind to something, when it would have been better to say, "Up until now, I've been unable to see the correlation between moving a lot as a young kid and being all too willing to accommodate my schedule to a friend's, even when it causes me stress or inconvenience".  She urges us to be specific, and doing so often restrains us from generalizing and judging ourselves. 

I have a habit of calling myself an idiot, mostly to amuse, but it is unnecessary.  I'm amusing anyway, ha ha ha.  I also describe myself as graceless and chubby and clueless.  Some of these adjectives are close to accurate, but I'm not telling you which ones, because, really, if I don't respect myself who will?  I'm so careful not name calling others, and pretty sloppy about myself.  I'm not a clown.  I don't need to pretend to be one to be engaging.  Yet the old habits persist.

Lately, I'm trying to describe myself as complicated.  I say I have a lot of interests and know how to entertain myself by myself.  I like a certain amount of privacy, but I also am very social.  I love kids but not for long periods of time.  I will watch almost any movie, but am snobbish about some films.  I don't want to waste my time and I thoroughly enjoy wasting my time.  If you want to get to know me it will take some time, and I'm a cautious person, so I won't reveal myself quickly.  But I'm worth the wait.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Weekly I come up against a dilemma about scheduling something with a friend.  I have this lifelong habit of agreeing with the friend about a time for a movie, say, when it is actually inconvenient for me.  I go, build up a bit of resentment, but seldom am able to speak up for myself.  My inner grumbling kicks in.  My friends usually pick times and dates that really work for them, but that amount of assertiveness makes me nervous when I try it.

So I've been thinking:  what is at the bottom of this?  I have perfectly delightful friends, and all of them are able to be flexible.  Yet I somehow cannot ask that of them.  The other day, my husband was asking me where I'd lived as a child and how long in each place.  I noticed that after 5 years in one city, I next lived two years in the south, then two years in California.  And for the first time I realized fully that not only was it traumatic to have moved in my sophomore year of high school from a one building 1-12 school to a high school of 5,000, but that these early moves, when I was five, then seven, then nine, caused me to be friendless and be pretty desperate to make friends.  I had to be the flexible one, to stand out, to be so engaging that kids wanted to play with me.  It was part of my survival technique, to be accommodating.

But like a lot of old habits, it's not doing me any good now.  I need not fear rejection because I don't accept the first good date for a friend.  I can speak up and we can work out a time mutually beneficial.  My friends have mostly been friends for decades, and we've weathered disagreements, cooling off periods and great talks when we cleared up misunderstandings about who we are.  It's pretty crazy to think I need to continue to fear rejection.  For that's where it began:  in fear of not having friends or losing them.  I've been going around with a mental age of about five.  Oh, dear.

I'm going to practice being assertive more.  In a pleasant way.  I'll just say, "I could possibly do that, but it makes my day very tight, and I'd rather enjoy our time together without the stress.  Is there another time and day that would work equally well for us?"  There.  Now that wasn't so hard.  We'll see how it goes when I'm really speaking to another person.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

With some friends I attended a conference last night about breast cancer prevention.  The two women speaking were doctors and researchers from our area, and they head an organization that looks at environmental factors in developing breast cancer.  They were articulate, passionate and determined to reach as many women as possible, to warn them of dangers that might be avoided, if we knew about them.  I was struck with how noble this kind of speaking out is.  They are attempting to lessen the harming that chemicals and other controllable exposures can effect upon us. 

The evidence suggests that we are most vulnerable in the womb and as small children to harm that decades later shows up as breast cancer.  These women were speaking for the pre-verbal.  They give voice to ourselves when we are at our most fragile. 

I was amazed at how much we can do to protect ourselves.  Right speech encourages more right speech, and I will be telling my friends, family and neighbors about websites to see what chemicals in shampoos, cleaners and other products are suspicious.  There are sites to tell us about foods and work dangers and harmful foods in our diets.  Avoiding alcohol and red meat are two of the simple substances to deselect.  We can pick organic foods and not buy cans and plastics.  Being sure radiation exposure is minimal is easy enough if we can speak up and ask our doctors about risks and harms.

So at the same time these doctors were speaking, they were empowering us to speak up for ourselves.  After their presentation they took every single question in the room.  What a compassionate and generous gift to us.  And we now have tools to do our own research, and ingredients to look up and choices we can make.  It makes us grownups, not helpless victims.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In the New York Times yesterday there was an article about the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' "The Death of Klinghoffer".  People are protesting the portrayal of the terrorists on board the ship as having a sympathetic side in that particular tragic incident.  This is a huge issue of art and free speech and fairness in history.  I admit to being sympathetic to the protestors, as the event didn't happen that long ago, and people who are alive were traumatized, and an innocent man's life was destroyed.

Yet I never heard of protests about "Nixon in China" and "Dr. Atomic",  though both of those operas take liberties to discuss true events in symbolic and inaccurate ways.  Adams saw an opportunity to focus on tragedy that is modern not ancient, and in the process made us think more deeply about iconic public figures.  In the 1930's, Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein used the historical figure Susan B. Anthony to great advantage and in the process made her come alive in an all new way in their opera "The Mother of Us All". 

I'm proud of the protestors and proud of the artists.  It takes courage to revisit an event that is codified in our history and make it disturbing enough to come alive again.  I haven't seen "The Death of Klinghoffer", but I've listened to the CD.  It's serious and haunting and trusts the audience to grapple with what the ultimate meaning of the event is or was and more importantly, how each person participating feels about the subject.  We are not talking about made up, gratuitous violence here, but real actions in a real world that perhaps doesn't pause often enough to think for themselves about news.  Adams makes us work.  The reopening of a closed discussion is painful, but may ultimately be illuminating.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Right speech often is a sticky subject.  I'm grappling right now with an elephant-in-the-room situation in a group I'm in.  I want to discuss it, but others don't and feel that it might be harmful to talk about the person involved.  Since I am not queen of right speech, I  hesitate, since knowing what will be harmful, is at best, guesswork.  So I've said nothing.  I've described my concerns to my therapist, but her response has me thinking I should respond within the group as well.  Yet, while I was away the group did discuss the situation with the person involved and decided to keep the status quo.  Fine, except I feel there is danger not addressed honestly in the group. 

My heart feels wrong about this.  But I don't want to rock the boat.  This is how it feels when someone says something racist, or denigrates a person with me as a witness.  It's wrong not to speak up, but speaking up will be so painful for the person and possibly damaging to the group and our closeness over decades. 

I'm fearful.  I don't have a lot of courage.  I've done courageous acts, as have most people, but I generally don't want to stick out.  I don't welcome CHANGE.  I'd like to stick my head in the sand.  That works, unless something bad happens and I know I might have prevented it.

I'm going to grapple with this some more.  Hopefully, some wisdom will surface.  My therapist says I could quit the group and therefore not be a party to the disfunction.  That is a scary step.  It feels like judging them all.  And I love them all.  But as I describe my dilemma, I think of my Al-ANON meetings.  Am I enabling the group to remain willfully blind?  Oh, dear.  I'm waiting for more clarity, because no one else can answer what action I should take but me.  At least I'm pausing, reflecting, hearing all sides. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In Jane Austen's novels, there is a propriety about "safe topics", usually the weather and the family's health.  Austen teases the reader with the high level of restrictions placed on people speaking in public, but look what happens when people cross the boundary:  you end up with Mrs. Bennett, who embarasses her daughters, at times even humiliating them, and in "Sense and Sensibility" the younger daughter's emotions, unchecked, expose her to ridicule and gossip.  There is grave danger in speaking in Austen's world, and though it appears to us today to be stuffy and rigid, I wonder if we have plunged too deeply into the alternative:  private thoughts and feelings made public through cell phones and a lack of manners.

Superficial manners are probably justifiably eliminated.  But what about courtesies like not interrupting, speaking respectfully to teachers, answering the elderly politely, and wishing others well when they wish you well.  Do we have to give up the rules of engagement so completely?  The exposure we see on TV with reality shows and Judge Judy and Dr. Phil are created for drama and are "shows" not reality, yet we often model them in our real lives.  In real life, people don't usually want complete honesty.  We want sensitivity to ourselves and kindness.  Bluntness hurts as much as it always did.  Yet somehow it has become cool to tear another apart, with as many witnesses as possible.

Keeping council with oneself is as wise now as it was then.  Thinking long and carefully before speaking still results in a better outcome.  In Buddhism, we talk about reactivity and response.  The first is impulsive and may lead to hurting others or shooting ourselves in the foot.  The later gives us that pause that may allow experience and consideration to inform our speaking.  Unintentional harming is less likely after a couple of deep breaths before we speak.  Do we really need to comment on another's weight, even if asked.  It's a minefield, as we know from experience.  Do we really want to slash back in anger when a friend judges us?  We may end up with an ex-friend and a lot of regret. 

You can read Miss Manners in the newspaper as I do, or pick up an Austen book to get a little perspective.  Because she skillfully shows you all the harm that speaking may entail. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Recently, I've been a witness to honesty in the medical realm.  A friend spent many weeks in ICU, and I was wowed by some of the doctors' ability to say "We don't know, we may never know" about her illness.  Younger doctors may be trained differently, and seem more comfortable being human instead of omniscient.  The doctors and bankers as gods thing is no longer the culture for most people.  Paradoxically, for me and others, the admission of not knowing all the answers makes us trust them more.  This is truth telling when anything else increases the terror.  Now, several of the friends wanted, demanded, answers or transferring the patient or consulting other doctors.  It's always worth listening to those people, because examining all the options is responsible.  But often these people are uncomfortable with uncertainty.  We all wish for certainty, but promising it is delusional.  Nothing is certain, except, as they say, death and taxes.  What this medical team did is honestly tell us they were doing everything in their power to keep her alive while she fought off the virus.  That statement told us she was in danger, that medicine could only do so much, but the team was passionate about fighting for her.  And she's home now.  If the outcome had been otherwise, there would have been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking, guilt and agony, but us grownups know there is serendipity and luck and mystery in medicine, as in everything else.

Yesterday I went to my own doctor for knee pain.  I waited 10 days and ignored a friend's advice to go immediately because it might be a blood clot and another who thought it was a pinched nerve.  I gave it a chance to get better.  It seemed to, then felt worse.  My doctor was matter of fact.  I am getting older and there is wear and tear on the knee.  This makes sense.  She also told me I could take Tylenol and use BenGay or some other product, but they would not fix anything, just ease the symptoms.  The best thing was to lose some weight.  Ah.  Painful to hear but true.  The one real thing I can do to protect my knee is take the load off.  I appreciated her candor.  I didn't want medicines or cover ups, I wanted to hear the one helpful statement that I could really affect.  So now, I know I need to lose weight for diabetes and for my knees.  She treated me as an actor in my own life.  That's respect. 

I don't think my mother's doctors made an effort to tell her honestly what she needed to do.  She was a smoker and an alcoholic.  Her doctor might  have called up the nerve to give her the names of clinics that could help.  He needed to call my dad and urge him to get her in a program.  But nobody liked to rock the boat in the old days.  Maybe he thought it futile, but it wasn't his call to make.  It was hers.  So she died instantly of her first heart attack at 61.  She was on no medication.  We begged her to quit smoking, her grandkids begged her, but she didn't think it was our business.  I told her how worried I was about her drinking, but I was just her daughter.  She pretty much didn't listen to anything my Dad said.  So she died, and maybe she would have anyway, it was too late.  But her doctor should have cared enough to try at least once.  Right speech is not harming.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In May, I visited the town where I lived for six years as a kid.  I'd seen some of the people since then, but not in that town.  I stayed with my friend.  Now this town is in the South, and politics and viewpoints differ but generally don't coincide with my own.  I got baited a bit for being from a liberal state and town, and was teased I was a hippie, and about the current President.  That kind of thing.  I laughed and didn't engage.  I had determined before I set out on the trip not to argue.  What is the point?  I wanted to respect them and their different environment, which has it's plusses and minuses.

I sat silent when no one had seen the movie "Lincoln".  He's not generally a hero there.  I'd kind of forgotten that.  I heard about Grant's drunkenness, as if that was the only thing he brought to the table.  I listened to a strange convoluted excuse for slavery in the South.  I did not take communion at the church where I attended a funeral, but I wasn't the only one to stay seated.

When I returned home I felt I'd stayed on the road to right speech, without straying into road rage.  I was proud of myself.  I wanted to hear what these other people had to say, not what I already knew I thought.  And yet.  A lot of talking was required to get the disturbance I felt inside out of my system.  I talked at length to friends and described what had happened.  I spent a session with my therapist.

There was a cost to all that detachment and disengagement.  I was chock full of feelings.  I was angry at some of the speech I had heard.  I really had to talk it all out later.  Maybe I was able to stay on track while away because I knew I had a safe sounding board when I returned.  I didn't live there so why upset people? 

If I had been more skillful, I might have responded in a way that didn't shut down the other person.  I did try humor whenever possible.  When they asked me if I was a Republican I replied "Absolutely" with a grin.  I said another time if a hippie was a dress code, then yes, I'd been one, but otherwise I was married with two toddlers and too busy for parties and drugs.  I didn't say I wasn't too busy to demonstrate with King and Chavez and begin a Nuclear Disarmament group.  Why go there?

The trip was a deep experience, delightful and challenging, insightful and full of friendliness and beauty.  And I'm still thinking over my behavior, not anyone else's.  So that I can become more skilled at being as honest balanced against  kind and non-harming.  And I can practice right here at home.

Waandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In the past I've failed at right speech sometimes when I wanted to be "cool".  When I was fourteen my family was visiting friends who had two teenage daughters older than me, and desperate to be "cool" I let them tell me the entire story of the Hitchcock movie "Psycho".  Believe it or not, my family was staying at a motel at the time, because we'd just moved from Virginia to California.  I wouldn't take a shower the whole week.  To this day, I've never seen the film, though a few years later I tried with my first husband.  Even on TV, it was terrifying, and I had to turn off the set and sleep with the lights on that night.

Okay, I was fourteen.  I'll cut myself some slack on that one.  But in my forties, I let my husband persuade me that Jodi Foster in "Silence of the Lambs" was so amazing, I needed to see it.  He had already seen it with his friend Ron, and promised to tell me when to close my eyes.  I had to fork over $80 to a therapist to talk about the movie, it disturbed me so much. 

Here is what I wish I had said, "I'm afraid of these kinds of films for all kinds of reasons.  I'm going to be haunted by the images in a bad way.  I wonder if supporting these films doesn't cause copy-cat crimes.  They probably are too suggestive to disturbed individuals.  Kids will inevitably see these and not admit it to an adult who might help them process their reactions.  There is no good reason for this film to be out in public."

I didn't have the nerve.   But I have not been convinced into seeing another horror film.  I've missed all the cult favorites, and I don't really care.  I'm relieved the images are not floating around in my mind.  I don't care about what is true.  I've heard a lot of stories as a counselor in safehouses for battered women.  I know what the world contains.  Kowtowing to the culture is not my idea of being cool.  In the name of cool we don't speak up when we should.  If we said no, others might as well.  Who cares if the actors will be up for Oscars?  Not me, not any more.  Count me out of the conversation.  And by the way, don't tell me the plot when you see it.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Nothing is simple.  I saw a movie yesterday, a courtroom thriller, that reminded me of how speech is withheld, people don't take the stand, don't fully cooperate with the law, because they make the call that they would harm another.  In this film, a defendant harmed himself by speaking fully and honestly.

When I was a safehouse counselor for battered women, sometimes we'd get a subpoena to testify.  You would think it would be to protect our client, but no, it was always because of a custody battle, and the batterer was trying to prove that the mother was unfit because she allowed the kids to reside in a shelter.  He was usually the bread winner and the house and lifestyle belonged to him.  The kids' quality of life would suffer if the mother got custody.  Yes, crazy - making, but true.

We were compelled to come to court.  And our files were not protected, as those of therapists are.  What to do?  We didn't keep files for longer than a day or two, everything was destroyed to protect our client's privacy.  When lawyers asked us about the client, we said we couldn't remember.  Because they were trying to force us into what would not be right speech.  Our highest oath was to keep the client alive.  And we didn't believe that it was her fault if she fled the home, the kids missed some school, and the presents in Santa's bag were light or non-existent.  The kids, we felt, had a right not to witness their father beating their mother, feel intimidated, and without intervention, repeat the battering cycle.

Right speech is not harming, to the best of our ability.  None of us ever went to jail for contempt of court, though we were threatened.  We had a little amnesia thing going.  And yes, we did have a bit of contempt for the court.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm in a writing group.  We meet every other week, and last night there were only four of us, and going in I anticipated that we would be done early, having plenty of time for quickwrites and maybe be a bit forelorn without all our members.  Just goes to show.  We had a dynamic discussion of each of the three pieces presented and then veered off into a subject that we all are contemplating:  getting older.  We discovered none of us quite know what to do with ourselves.  The two widows and two long married ladies.  Where is the manual that guides us?

We went an hour over time and had to tear ourselves away.  I'd tell you in detail about the discussion except that wouldn't be right speech, would it?  But right speech, when it is honest and heartfelt is a treasure I have an impulse to share, because it is enlivening, thought provoking and connective.  Yes, right speech is connective.  It places us in each other's positions, searches for commonalities, and affirms our glorious humanity.

Call me old fashioned, but I like to be in a room with another human being when I speak with her.  The emailing, texting, phoning is fine, and sometimes efficient and appropriate.  But the talk isn't as free wheeling as what happened last night, and it can't open up a subject and let it flow and divert and meander.  Our discussion was spontaneous, exhilarating and somehow so comforting.  We have trust and have sworn confidentality to help us feel open to whatever is coming up for us in that moment.  The four us us were wide awake and in the moment .  What we spoke was what was in our hearts.  We've known each other a lot of years, decades, and this trust has happened subtly over time.  How lucky we are.  Right speech is liberating.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

For many years I practiced Zen Buddhism, which involves a whole lot of silence.  A student might have an opportunity to ask a question or might not.  I spoke during an interview with the teacher.  But I usually came and left the zendo in silence, and driving home, I'd not even turn on the radio.  Why?  I wanted to keep that silence close to me for as long as possible.  In the silence my ego and personality dropped away.  It felt like a heavy backpack being lifted from me.  In the silence I didn't have to attempt to have people like me or have a favorable opinion of me.  I could just be my no self.

Now my Zen teacher is retired.  I see her once a month at our study group, but for the last three years, I've been a member of the Tibetan Rinpoche Anam Thubten's sangha.  I go weekly to meditate and listen to his dharma talk.  I'm still adjusting, because this sangha is the opposite of the previous one.  People come early and talk, they have tea and talk during the break, they talk afterward.  There is no gentle transition from silence to socializing.  The first few months I felt judgment arising.  I didn't think Anam's students were behaving well.  The noise bothered me.  And an ancient shyness rose up in me that made it difficult for me to initiate talking to people sitting next to me or around me.  I felt I'd been thrown into a lively, confusing mob.

Over time, I realized that having the buffering traditions I was used to had caused me to think in a dichotomy.  I was a Buddhist only in the right setting.  The rest of the time I was unable to move my practice into my ordinary life.  Not good.  Not skillful.  Now I'm attempting to erase the transition, and be mindful in the midst of chaos.  It no longer matters so much where I am when I'm practicing, because every moment has it's challenge to be present.  Opportunity arises and I try to meet it.

So now I'm chatting away with the best of them.  I have friends whose names I actually know, and I don't feel upset with myself if we discuss, as Susie and I did yesterday, where our babies were born or when we lived in the same town.  It's all good, as Bruce Almighty would say.  It's all good.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Every few weeks, a man on the street above us screams obsenities and rages so loudly that we hear in our houses no matter what is going on.  We've called the police, and they are familiar with him, and, as most police have to do these days, they talk him down, get him to a 72 hour hold or to jail.  What a tragedy.  Lack of mental health services is a shame upon our nation.  Should we have the right to hold them?  Should they have the right to refuse?  It's complicated territory.

But his voice, his absolute rage, is emblematic of powerlessness.  He can't control his demons, he doesn't deserve to suffer in this way.  Is he afraid of the danger he might be to others?  Can his speech or anyone's express such agony? 

I pray for him.  I pray he gets the help he needs.  I pray we get more shelters, half way houses, therapies, and medications that truly help a person live a dignified life.  Compromised perhaps, not what it might have been had the person not been struck down with this illness, but not alone, not so entirely alone that the only people who speak to him wear uniforms.  I pray for those uniformed people as well, that they find the gift of speech that will soothe and sort out what the problem is and how best to address it.  And I pray the rest of us listen, not leaving these people's care to the risk of others, but problem solve ourselves to get these people help and a life where they can be around people and not be so isolated.  It's our responsibility, as surely as it is to make every effort to feed those hungry, house those without shelter and develop the structures so no one is marginalized, but acknowledged as our responsibility in a country which can well afford to help, and strangely chooses not to.  Let's not be that country any more.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Several months ago I arrived on a Sunday morning to have my hair cut by a woman who only has Sunday appointments because she's in school.  She came to the door and asked if I could come back in a few minutes as she was running late.  Luckily, the salon is a couple of doors from one of my favorite bookstores, so I happily browsed and returned after about 30 minutes.  I sat down and waited.  I thumbed through all the idiotic haircut magazines.  I meditated, I thought of errands I needed to do.  And I stewed.  An hour later, I got up, in frustration, came around the wall and told her I was really upset.  She apologized, but that made it worse, because she had squeezed this person in who needed color without bothering about my time.  She said she had tried to call me but I was gone, which meant she tried to call about the time I left my house and it takes only ten minutes tops to get to her salon.

Dear reader, I was in tears.  I said I had lots of things I could be doing.  Evidently, crying was one of them.

What is wrong with this picture?  Carrie, who up until then had seemed dependable, was desperate for clients, and she thought she could juggle it all.  She used wrong speech by not telling me it would be an hour, not a few minutes.  Honesty would have allowed me to do an errand or two and not twiddle my thumbs.

What is right with this picture?  I spoke up and told her my feelings were hurt, showed her how vulnerable and upset I felt, at that moment.  She heard me, we talked it out, and I sat down and had my haircut.  She offered for the cut to be free, and I said no, I would pay.  I understood how she struggles to be in school and work and get the balance right.  I've been late getting back to relieve a babysitter, misjudged what I could get done in a given amount of time, and disappointed others.  We're all human.

I stood up for myself, but I was empathetic to Carrie.  I left the salon feeling dead center in the middle of Right Speech.  No name calling, no rage, just how it made me feel.  As if my time and person didn't matter.  It's awfully hard to say that kind of thing, so my gift to Carrie was my transparency.  And I felt heard.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My granddaughter loves to visit our neighborhood pet store.  Currently, she is hoping and praying for a hamster.  I'm fairly certain her mother is riding this one out.  So we visit the hamsters, and the cats, which her mother is also adamant about not adopting, as they just got an adorable dog last year, she works full time and has a two year old as well.  None of this affects my granddaughter.  She would own a zoo if she could.

This week we made our visit.  This shop is known for exotic birds.  There are every kind you could imagine.  They are babysitting many birds each week as well.  I'm fond of going around, and, you guessed it, talking to the birds, many of whom have good vocabularies.  This time there was a huge parrot, bright emerald green with feathers of red and yellow, just out on a bird perch instead of in a cage.  A little girl rushed up to us and said, "Look at this!".  She kept saying hi and hello, and the bird greeted her back, but then he raised one claw and waved at us.  He had me at the wave.  So I stood there while my granddaughter walked around and talked to him and waved back. 

Birds are extremely social, and when I'm in the store I try to make the rounds, talk to most of them, and read the cards so I know what words they've been taught.  Often it's "pretty boy" or "how you doing?" but they all respond to a soft kind voice and make eye contact.  They clearly appreciate my speaking to them.  And they are obviously intelligent.  What a pleasure to use my speech to connect with another species.  They definitely appreciate my effort.  It brightens their day.  And mine.  I can't forget the parrot waving.  In fact, I might have to stop in today, by myself, and say hello.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

As a kid I devoured French romantic novels.  I adored Victor Hugo (still do), especially Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I also loved Alexandre Dumas and his tales "The Three Muskateers", "The Man in the Iron Mask" and "The Count of Monte Christo".  I read them over and over.  I also worshiped "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Edmund Rostand, and a movie version came out that I think I saw, with Jose Ferrer as Cyrano.  I own a French film of the play with Gerard Depardieu. 

I identified with Cyrano because he wasn't a good looking person, but was a verbal wit, smart, and full of heart.  I saw myself along those lines.  I already knew I wasn't going to grow up to be Roxanne.  And I wasn't going to get the guys she did.  Because even Cyrano wanted beauty, not wit.  It was an object lesson.  Sure, in the end she says it was his words she fell in love with.  But let's face it, her devotion to words was never even tested really.  The package was a gorgeous guy and the poetry the coup de grace, so the actual percentage of hormones to literary elevation is suspicious, to say the least.

How powerful are words?  Well, I've lived my life believing in them, as I've taught English and literature and written all my life.  The play "Cyrano" would have us trusting that a swordsman with words was deeper and finer than the ordinary person.  The shy and tongue tied may love, but without the glory of transcendence.  But we all have met wordsmiths who are deceitful and manipulative.  The "used car salesman" syndrome.  In my generation we were warned about the guy who could charm our pants off. 

So much as I still love the language of the play, I doubt that the message is particularly useful.  It's meant to have us see beyond superficial beauty, yet even the mighty Cyrano falls for prettiness.  Had he grown up, picked a Jane Eyre type librarian, he might have been truly happy, but his love is possible only as a dream.  It's Romeo and Juliet for adolescents.  Enjoy the lines, but beware what it appears to teach us.  Language itself is a lure of beauty, not necessarily substance.

Wandering Along the Path: RIght Speech

I have a practice that I've not mentioned to anyone, including my teachers.  Whenever I am eating out I say thank you to the waiter and the busperson every time they fill my water glass or bring me something.  It's an invisible practice, almost, and I haven't noticed a reaction in the servers.  What did happen, over time, was that my husband began thanking them as well.  We are so polite it probably would look funny to any observer.  Why do it?  As an acknowledgement of their hard work, low pay, and also so they understand they are not invisible to us.

I have not spoken of this to my husband.  I simply noticed the last few times we went out that I have inadvertently trained him.  It's automatic now for both of us.

When I was in college I worked as a waitress at an all-you-can-eat restaurant.  A few months of that job sensitized me to the slings and arrows of such work.  I know a waitperson may be a PhD, a college student, a single mom with two toddlers, an older person desperate for income.  These are real people, not slaves or servants.  When they do their job well it's an art.  They don't get much recognition or gratitude.  They often don't have health benefits or pensions or any parachute.  My sister-in-law, with an MA, was recently fired from her waitressing job after thirty years.  She teaches some classes in acting, and has occasional work in the theater, and luckily, has a rent controlled apartment in Manhattan.  She is 64 years old and looking for that part time job that can keep her afloat.  She's a real, talented, funny, kind person.

Feeling gratitude for the food we eat involves those who grow it, harvest it, pack it, ship it, deliver it, sell it, and in the case of restaurants, serve it to us, without any labor on our parts.  Thanking our servers acknowledges the debt we owe.  And, of course, tipping helps even more.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

There is right speech for all sentient beings.  Most people observe that cats and dogs and horses and other domesticated animals respond to human speech.  It may be tone more than the words, although many animals have at least a small human vocabulary.  We modulate our voices depending on whether we are trying to effect their behavior, or soothe them or engage them fondly.  Hearing an animal called a negative term is painful.  If I have to discipline the dogs, a firm no, leave it or drop it suffices in most cases.  I don't want to humiliate them, any more than I would a child or a friend.

Most animals know if you are ridiculing them or rejecting them.  It's true that cats often sit on the lap of the person who dislikes them the most, but then cats have a dark sense of humor.  Dogs often try to get you to change your mind:  "I know you're upset that I ate the meatloaf on the counter, but look at how I can throw the ball for myself.  Ain't I cute?"  They think licking your bare legs is appealing to you. 

You can beat down an animal literally, or you can do it with verbal abuse, just as with humans.  They are social beings, as we are, and often we isolate them from their own kind and then don't make the effort to make it up to them.

When I went to the summer retreat at Yvonne's place, the property next to hers had a lone horse.  It made me sad.  The owners were seldom there and the horse was fenced in away from everyone.  I spoke of it to her in one interview, and the next time she saw me she said she'd spoken to the owner and the horse had been moved to a pasture with other horses.  Yvonne  advocated for a being that has trouble communicating with humans.  Now that's what I call right speech.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I shouldn't even bring up this topic, as the examples are endless, but President Obama's labeling ISIL "evil" a few days ago echoed George Bush's "axis of evil" in eery ways.  I don't want to debate the meaning of the word evil or whether there is evil in the world.  Personally, I think there is that kind of darkness as a part of human existence.  There are people who's DNA is damaged and there also seem to be people undamaged but choosing to embrace darkness and even experiencing pleasure when doing so.
But for a leader, whose power is great, to speak in dualities is unwise.  If there would ever be hope of dialogue, then such language does it's utmost to kill that hope.  Demonizing the other sets us on the path of conflict. 
Yes, the other has often spoken inflamatory words first.  But they triumph when immitate them as we speak in a way that shuts down recognition that the other is human, that situations and circumstances change, and we really need to keep the door open, not closed.

What if the President had said, "This terrible harming of innocents breaks our hearts.  Our compassion goes out to their families, and to the families of the people who commit these acts.  We pray we will see a way to dialogue and peace.  We want to embrace a path that gives respect to all human beings, encourages them to have a voice, and practice compassion for all suffering"

Sounds too much like the Dalai Lama?  Well, I'm not sure I think I can sound too much like the Dalai Lama and I'd be quite happy if our leader took a few lessons.  Don't speak out of rage, speak when you are calm and centered.  Don't demonize.  First help those who are victims and their families.  Move the focus away from the violent actors and on the people who suffer because of them.  Take the beheading videos off as much as possible.  Don't allow this on our TV.  Respect the victims.  Let's just try that approach.  Set a different example of standing firmly for kindness and compassion.  Let's walk that path because it's the right thing to do.  It begins with choosing the right words.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

One of my many struggles with right speech is waiting to speak until asked.  I have enough opinions for a small village, and sometimes they just want to bubble out of me.  However, that urge is not really communication, and it can turn off the path and become minding someone's else's mindstream, lecturing, and blowing off steam.  These habits of mine are best done when no one else is in the room.  Lecturing is a leftover of teaching junior college.  I was sometimes attempting to inject opinions and caring into students with neither.  It never was successful, but that didn't stop me.

Minding someone else's mindstream is tempting, because anyone else's mind feels more interesting than my own, and looking into my own mind can be quite distressing.  False feelings of control bloom wildly when I think I know what's best for another or even what they're thinking.  It's reassuring but extremely deluded.  The arrogance is shocking, and of course, I absolutely hate it when someone else tries to tell me what I'm thinking and feeling.  I don't even like the question to be asked.  Oh, dear, well, back to my own mindstream, if I must.

Blowing off steam, if I recognize that is where I'm headed, needs no witnesses, or should I say, victims.  I can talk to myself, write an email and erase it, write a letter and burn it, punch pillows or, my favorite, eat popcorn.  As long as I'm not harming anyone else, it's an outlet, and it can be a shortcut to the longed for cool-down, then calm sitting to see if there is an issue I really need to address with another, or I need to figure out how not to be in a similar situation again.  Rational thought has it's place here.

There's an impulsivity at work here that doesn't work for me, not in the kind of situations where I can feel steam arising.  I'm the little engine that could, but shouldn't.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm not sure what the key to Right Speech is.  Maybe compassion, or empathy or wisdom.  For me, the dharma teachings have guided and still guide me.  But on my own, the practice of gratitude has been so helpful.  A little over a year ago our older daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Fear threatened to swallow me up.  A friend told me the antidote to fear is gratitude.  Several days later, I was in a bookstore and noticed this little orange journal.  It was a Gratitude journal, with promptings and space for a year of entries.  I bought it, and placed it by my bedside table.  Every night I wrote in it.  Sometimes I had to sit a while until I found the moment in the day that I was genuinely grateful for.  Sometimes I was grateful for big things:  my daughter's chemo tolerance or a talk with my granddaughter.  Sometimes it was the first bloom on the hydrangea bush or a really good curry at lunch.

Occasionally, the book would tell me to make a list of things I was grateful for, and I noticed I never had enough room on the page.  I began thanking people in real life, and spontaneously telling them how much I appreciated a call, a card, having a walk together.  I was practicing a new way of feeling and noticing.  I stopped worrying about being appreciated back.  I lavished as much thoughtfulness on strangers as on friends.  If the opportunity arose to thank a person, I seized it.  Every time I did so, I felt just that little bit better.

Having access to gratitude has encouraged the right motivation for speaking and affirmed my connection to others.  I don't have a habit of speaking of my gratitude, because that would be insincere.  I wait until the feeling arises in me and speak the feeling of the moment.  I encourage that feeling by the journal practice, and at this point, as I'm on my second journal, I see the world differently, so the feeling comes up easily and spontaneously.  And for that, I am infinitely grateful.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My husband and I visited an art show at a local museum, and driving back home, we talked about what we liked that we'd seen and what we didn't.  My husband was generalizing about modern art versus traditional art and I might have enjoyed that conversation a few years ago, but now, with the help of my teacher Yvonne Rand, my generalization habit has been diminished quite a bit because of her admonition to watch out for generalizing.

Making sweeping statements can be fun, and done tongue in cheek, it has it's moments.  But when you begin generalizing, you end up with countless exceptions.  Generalizing is lazy, as well as inaccurate.  So I've been trained not to say, for instance:  "That painting looks derivative", when, in fact, derivation has it's important place in art, and referencing that's deliberate may open up the art work in a way that the artist intends and the viewer benefits.  Saying, "I don't like Pop Art" only means you haven't enjoyed any work in that category up until now.  None of us has seen all representations of that school, and you could be in for huge surprise, one that could change how you see all Pop Art.  For years I couldn't see what all the fuss was about with El Greco.  Then I went to the Prado in Spain, followed by a weekend at Toledo, and now I love his art.  My mind was transformed.  I thought I hated video art until I saw my first Bill Viola piece and William Kentridge's work, and now I keep discovering new video art that I love.  I no longer avoid that section of a museum.

So generalizing, as well as closing down a lively conversation, can inhibit a person from being open and curious.  Pleasures will not be had, because of the rigidity of the thought and speech.  So next time you're in a museum, pick one piece that intrigues you, and be specific about parts you like.  Try not to let it speak for the oeuvre of the artist, just tell me how you feel when you look at it.  Then I'll tell you how it makes me feel, and we're off, not competing, but having fun and stretching each others' minds.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I was in the presence of right speech yesterday afternoon.  It felt like a blessing.  Ramon, the DMV driving test person in El Cerrito, did all the right things.  He joked with me first thing, so that we were both laughing for a full minute.  He had me do the hand signals and told a story about another driver who got it all mixed up.  He smiled a lot, assuring me he would not trick me and that we were going to have fun.  And damned if we didn't.  I have macular degeneration, and my left eye can't pass the driving test, so every two years now I need an update from my eye doctor and a 45 minute driving test on hill and dale and freeway.  This is good.  It protects other drivers.  But this is stressful, worse than five crowns at the same time in the dentist's office.  I had not slept well the night before.  For weeks before I was worrying about what it would mean if I could no longer drive.  It was not a pretty picture, despite trying to reassure myself I'd adapt, and it was not like a major health issue.

Ramon said he was on my side.  When I stopped at one stop sign and we were talking then I edged out and a car came barreling down the hill he said he distracted me.  How gentlemanly of him.  He kept reassuring me I was doing "fine".  He talked about how he handled it when two cars going the same direction were stopped at a pedestrian crosswalk and he couldn't see left because the car beside him was a big SUV.  He honked, rolled down the window and asked if the crosswalk was clear.  He told me this story as I was stopped and couldn't see past the SUV beside me.  I admitted I was shy honking the horn, and I would just wait to see what the other driver did.  He manuevered a U turn and I was free to continue. 

Everything Ramon said supported me.  He was the heart of compassion.  He didn't skimp on the test, we had had to check off every single thing, but he was fair and encouraging.  That is right speech.  He eased my nervousness, saw me as a person, laughed with me as equals, and was almost as happy as I was that I passed.  What a guy!

Wndering Along the Path: Right Speech

My hospitalized friend called last night triumphantly with great news:  her gastric tube is out.  I was in the middle of being upset that our dog had chewed her but bloody, after wearing a cone for two weeks and healing another spot.  It was our two dogs' 10th birthdays, and I was furious with them, and then the call. 

What saved me from moaning about the dogs was that I listened to the happiness in her voice, and felt immediately how touched I was that she had called to share her joy.  Sharing joy is right speech in the highest sense.  We often get into the habit of communicating in crisis, where we feel justified in "bothering" a friend.  Can we call without a "good reason" and feel fine saying,  "I just wanted to talk with you" ?  That is a pretty vulnerable statement.  For myself, I feel closer to the friends and family who can call for no reason.  They were thinking of me, and the action they took puts some heart behind it.

This is very old fashioned in our current world.  A friend emailed me that she had been reading this blog and was struck with how we hide ourselves behind the veils of email, texting and tweets.  We keep it short and generic, you can't hear a quiver in our voice, so we can be glib or curt.  And you have to respond inside the same straightjacket.  None of us knows what this "means", but we are in transition to written speech, something that can be edited, deleted and without the body involved at all.  Yet our bodies and voices allow us to speak from the heart-mind, rather than cerebrally.  Does this impair our connection to others?  I don't have the answer. 

In the past, I've trusted that the risk of talking in the same room with a person is worth it, because I learn so much from the conversation about myself and the other.  I goof up and have to apologize.  I misspeak and correct myself at the time or later, so that I'm as clear as I want to be.  I can ask questions freely, and pause to really listen to the answers.  I get to brain storm and free flow ideas, without commitment, and find out what I really think.  I'm able to pay attention to the tone of voice, the body language, the eye contact.  This is important information.  A thumbs up or smiley face is no substitute.  Texting is truly helpful, but I'm not certain I think it is speech.