Isn’t that what talking heads, media and politicians love to do - to take comments out of context to further their goals of increased readership and winning elections?
Listening isn’t easy. There is one school of thought that says we aren’t trained to listen carefully and all we have to do is take some lessons in how to listen.
Other schools say it’s because we may need a hearing aid. Other reasons include that we don’t really have an interest in what the person is saying or we’re preoccupied with our own thoughts and with so many of our own thoughts in our head, well, what’s more important huh?
How many times have you had to say “I didn’t say that, I said blah blah blah!!!” to someone missing your point and arguing back? How do we, as humans, with our own unique individual framework of understanding this life and world, reduce our dukkha, our dissatisfaction simply because it is so difficult to fully communicate?
We laugh at the misunderstanding of the word ‘joint’ in the image above, but isn’t that the type of misunderstanding that may start fights, that may lead to divisiveness, that even starts wars? In our own everyday dealings, this happens. Some are simple but some are serious enough to send us off the deep end.
There is a quote about misunderstandings saying that if there is a misunderstanding, and it is beginning to grow, cut our ego, not the relationship. Cut our ego. As Buddhists we know it is our greed, anger and folly, our self-important self, our ego demanding constant fuel; demanding everyone understand me and me alone. Not such an easy task to cut our ego is it…
We practice to become aware of that little “trigger” inside of us we absolutely know is switched on when we believe we are misunderstood. We gear up and sometimes, we neglect to put into context what the other person is saying, what they need from us, what is the cause of a potentially escalating situation.
Right Speech is one of the Eightfold Noble Path of Buddhism. In his book "The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching," Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh 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."
The path of Right Speech is so difficult to do. But, if we don’t start and try now, when will we?
Namo Amida Butsu.
In Gassho,
Rev. Anita
rev.anita.cbt@outlook.com
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