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.