[written for a presentation the FHNN mediation group about 4 months ago]
While lots of living things have means of communication and some primates have demonstrated very rudimentary "language," we humans stand quite apart with our language abilities, the complexity of our languages, and the natural ease most acquire language in childhood. Somehow we master words, phrases, tone, sentence structures, metaphors, poetry, prose, stories of fact and fiction, writing, talking, reading, etc. In the 21st century we live in a sea of language coming at us in many forms everywhere.
If you close your eyes and place your focus on your breathing, you discover immediately that not only do you swim in a sea of language, language is also part and parcel of your being. Thoughts come one after another, unbidden, sometimes partial or ill-formed, often quite useful, sometimes entertaining, and frequently anxiety inducing. How little control you have over this can be quite surprising, even disconcerting.
Because of the way mindfulness is often presented, people sometimes conclude that thinking is a bad thing or to be discouraged when meditating. To me, that's like saying there is something wrong with breathing while meditating. Thinking and abstract thought are essential to any human society and any individual human life bringing us joy as well as sorrow, science and poetry, expressions of love and reasoning about death, and on and on. In meditation practice we learn about our own thinking processes and how to work with them so we can suffer less and live more freely.
There is a way to learn to control your thoughts, it's just much more complicated than any of us would wish for. In the Buddhist tradition it's called the 8 fold path, formally, the Noble Eightfold Path which, to oversimplify, consists of wisdom practices, ethical behavior, and meditation practices. It takes all of those things and a fair amount of practice before you start to see the change in your thinking processes. Hysteresis (the lag between changing inputs and their effect) is often hard to accept.
Mindfulness and concentration are, of course, part of the meditation practices group in the 8 fold path and our main tools for learning about how and why thoughts arise, persist, and pass away.
Interestingly, speech is in the ethical practices category. What is speech but thinking being shared with someone else? How we think is quite personal. How we talk is an ethical behavior because it affects both ourselves and others.
Is it possible to work with speaking in a small group in a way similar to how we work with thinking when we meditate in silence? In short, yes, and it requires the same sort of effort that we bring to meditation, so we bring that same kind of non-judgemental awareness and attention to speaking. For many of us that is much more difficult than examining our thinking process in meditation. There is an ancient list of the 5 greatest fears: death, sickness, dementia, loss of livelihood, and speaking in public. Isn't it remarkable that speaking is in that list?
Do you enjoy talking a lot or do you tend toward shyness? Either way, practicing with speech is much easier in a warm, supportive, non-judgmental environment. It's wonderful if that very group of people spends some time together sitting in silence. Slowing everything down helps too. Being heard is not instantaneous. It takes some time for your words to be processed by everyone which is why it is not helpful to jump right in when someone stops speaking. Providing some silence after a person speaks, like the duration of one easy breath, is a benefit to all. It's also helpful to know that practicing this way will end. So it's nice to have some time after mindful speaking practice to talk in an ordinary, casual way.
Practicing with speech entails listening as well. To encourage deeper practice we're advised to share meaningful rather superficial things about how we are. The space is made safer for us if we know we are not going to be subject to advice or pushback coming at us. Meaningful speech often comes with strong emotion which can make others uncomfortable. Even here, hearing what's being said and acknowledging the emotional content in silence for a little bit is a great way to let the speaker know they are heard.
Since group practice time is limited, practicing with speech also means sharing that time. Sometimes when speaking we find ourselves struggling to find the right words and lose track of time. It's useful to have a gentle way to let the speaker know when that's happening.
Language, thinking, and talking are so much a part of who we are, so embedded in everyone's social and cultural habits that just a little bit of regular mindfulness practice can lead to transformative positive results both for you and everyone you interact with.
And then there's the discussion time after the presentation. I think of that as more practice time with the same sort of mindful effort we put into meditation. Once you speak the first time, please hold off until everyone else has had a chance to speak. Please address your own concerns and speak from the heart. This isn't time for cross talk or back and forth discussion, please just save that for the after-11:30 casual conversation time. Mindful speaking and listening is, I think, every bit as useful as meditation and part and parcel of mindfulness practice. Learning not to comment on what someone else has to say is for many of us an advanced practice. It's our cultural habit to engage with each other (which is exactly why this is part of practice time and I'm asking us not to be falling back into our habitual ways of discussion). It may need to be experienced to understand its utility. Taking a breath between speakers is part of that.
All of you are knowledgeable, smart, and articulate. Being of lean expression is not easy. Taking more time, embracing silence, noticing your own motivations to talk rather than listen, to listen rather than proffer advice, to make space for those who are slower or more shy or more stressed -- those are great skills to acquire. There are countless opportunities to banter and debate outside of mindfulness practice time.
Can't help it. I feel compelled to reiterate this stuff periodically. I can't let go of the hope that this will become adopted by our group for all the right reasons, not because I'm pushing it, not because I personally found it transformative (tho' I did), but because so many people I admire teach this, and it has good backing with communication experts.