Gimme Samma Vaca!

I listened to a recent Against The Stream Podcast today (I highly recommend these free podcasts from the Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society as a resource of great Dharma Talks - Kick 'em a few bucks if you find it useful for your practice).  The Podcast was one by JoAnna Harper on Right Speech.  Samma-Vaca, I think, if you're keeping track in Pali.

Anyhow, the podcast was great.  JoAnna talks about all the types of wrong speech such as gossip.  She even goes in to things that she personally lumps in to that same category such as eye-rolling, door-slamming and so forth.  I like her talks and, as she's fairly new to it I guess, her down to earth and sincere vibe.  I especially liked that shortly after she pointed out that people need to learn to appreciate the silences and not feel the need to fill every moment with conversation (which she stepped right up and acknowledged that she used to do herself) she then muttered that she had to "keep turning pages" while she looked for something in her notes.  It was a very endearing quality to see her do exactly what she was talking about during the Dharma Talk.

Anyhow, it got me thinking.  Or, more accurately, it focused my lens on what had been running through my mind a lot lately.  I've had numerous situations lately where I've had to practice Right Speech very mindfully or have been keenly aware of the effects of Right (or wrong) Speech.

A couple of decades ago, a guy who was like a brother to me did many things which damaged his family and our brotherhood of friends.  I honestly, very seriously, considered him to be evil.  Evil like the devil, to quote from "So I Married An Axe Murderer".  So for two decades, I carried this fear and hatred around with me, and we never spoke again.  Until recently.  Recently he initiated a reunion, of sorts, and our brotherhood rallied together again in his home town.  I was in to the whole thing mostly to see the other guys I had lost touch with.  Building up to the event, I practiced a lot of loving-kindness meditation, and spent great quantities of meditation time pondering and practicing forgiveness, specifically toward him, so that I could get through the experience.  I fully expected it to go badly, but had hopes that we would at least get through it without drama.

I arrived in town and, after the gang got together, it was immediately obvious to me - let alone everyone else - that we had all lost out on almost two decades of friendship, fellowship and brotherhood because of wrong speech.  Unskillful words, and little else, had caused this.  And a LACK of compassion and a clinging to wrong perceptions, had perpetuated it.  In the end, open hearts and a lot of hugs had erased all the pain and suffering that those words had caused.  We all picked up where we had left off, and the reunion was one of the greatest, most healing weekends of my life.

I've had several other experiences recently that are similar too.  Old friendships that had been lost and rediscovered turned out to have been lost in the first place due to unskillful speech.  Old opportunities were missed because of a lack of using Right Speech.  Current relationships are protected from harm by the judicious use of Right Speech, my care for the latter having been now informed by the lessons taught by the former.  The list goes on.

Credit: Free images from acobox.com 

Thich Nhat Hanh says “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”  This is so very, very true.

Please check out the Dharma Talks mentioned above if you have the time.  Ponder this post.  Consider and meditate on Right Speech.  It's only one aspect of the Eightfold Path, but take the time to practice it and consider it.  Don't let unskilful speech cause you to lose years of relationships, or miss opportunities that could be life altering.  All of that said, I have no regrets.  As I've written recently, I firmly believe that everything is as it should be, but these are all things that you should experience and deal with skilfully for yourself.  I wish you the best, most skillful results of your own Samma Vaca!

_/\_

A Fist Full Of Water

I visited a couple of dear friends last week, for a few days, and I was amazed by how a certain theme seemed to run through the weekend.  What was supposed to be a weekend at a friends house, turned out to be a weekend overflowing with interwoven lessons all tied together with a common Dharma theme.  It was a little odd, and yet not at all odd, and it really effected me greatly.  I thought I might share a little about it here.

These friends are both Christians, though each follows a different path to their connection to the "Kingdom of God".  They also have kids.  They've chosen to provide their kids with a foundation in their Faith, but that has turned out to be a real challenge for one of them.  Without getting in to it too openly in this public forum, suffice it to say that they are at odds over this to a degree and want to resolve it, but have been struggling.  It doesn't matter why, the point is that they have this struggle and it's not getting resolved.

Add to that, a few other challenges.  We have a mutual friend who's lost in life and is creating challenges for himself and others due to his own dukkha.  We discussed work related problems that my friend is facing.  We discussed all manner of things.

The thing that struck me as so interesting, and compelling, about all this is that early on in the weekend we were discussing some people we know who are addicts.  In discussing how they've found God through recovery but now just seem to struggle with addiction to God, my friend mentioned how these folks we were discussing get caught up in their "White Light Experiences" where they "See God" and then spend their lives clinging to and chasing that.  He speaks with authority on the subject, I'll leave it at that.

We talked about how they seem to lose themselves in their religion rather than getting the point of it.  His point was that a lot of new Christians come to the religion in their lowest times, and they have some sort of religious experience (such as "seeing God") and then they spend the rest of their lives - or until they eventually "get it" - trying to cling to that experience.  Since we were talking specifically about addicts who find religion at the time, I agreed and said that I see the same thing in Buddhism.  I see a lot of Buddhists who experience an "enlightenment" moment, and then spend years trying to get back to that in their practice.  I said that they "have that moment, and then grasp and squeeze it" (this was how I conveyed attachment to him) until it runs through their hands like water, rather than cultivating the conditions for those moments to happen more often and learning from them when they do.

This theme, whether regarding addicts or workers or marriage, recurred over and over throughout the weekend, and in to the following week.  Each of these things that came up, ended with the realization that the person in question (sometimes one of us) was squeezing a moment of clarity rather than being present in that moment and learning from it.

I had the great pleasure of spending time with each of my friends individually over the course of the weekend, and was able to practice deep listening with them both.  Through that, and some mindful walking with them, I was able to witness my friends wife express her challenge verbally and openly and arrive at a solution which she credited me for helping her to see.  I didn't really do much, except listen and give her back what she had said to me, but in a slightly different way.  My advice essentially amounted to "You already know what you believe, you just need to stay connected to that in this situation instead of going in to it as if you are looking for what you already have!"

It was so beautiful and I felt privileged to be a part of this process for her. It remains to be seen if the solution will be effective, but at least when I left them they were both aware that they are aiming at the same target and had a new way of trying to work together to get there. Initially they were at a complete disconnect, feeling they were travelling in different directions.  When I left, mostly through deep listening, they were talking openly to each other about the matter and felt very connected.  Amazing.

Since I returned, we've spoken some more about the other issues that came up during the stay regarding some of our mutual friends and the challenges they face.  Also about the challenges those friends challenges are causing the two of us!  And again this theme of squeezing to tightly to what we want came up.  Both that we are grasping tightly to the outcome we want for our project, squeezing tightly to the idea of our friend as he once was rather than as he is now and to our desire for things to be other than they are seeming to be.

I guess all of this is really just a long winded way of saying that I was greatly enriched by watching the Dharma unfold over the last week, and being able to be keenly aware of suffering, of attachments and how they cause said suffering, and that letting go of those attachments leads to the cessation of that suffering.  It happens like this all around us, all the time.  It was a treasure to be so awake to it!

I feel as though I've only rambled here and not expressed my thoughts well, but I hope they've been of some use for you.  This quote from Thich Nhat Hanh came to mind often over the weekend as I thought of the interconnected nature of all these things:

"Enlightenment, for a wave in the ocean, is the moment the wave realizes it is water."