In the cacophony of clicks, clatter, bells, and whistles that is social media, the art of conversation has been reduced to drive-by comments—swift, reckless, and as enriching as a fast-food binge, and usually as enjoyable as a carjacking. Our keyboards and smartphones are battlegrounds where restraint meets impulse, and, sadly, impulse often wins. Yet, in this era of digital verbosity, the Buddhist eightfold path offers an antidote to this affliction—a call to right speech remains ever relevant.

Right speech, one of the ethical imperatives of Buddhism, isn’t about censorship; it’s about intention, awareness, and the karmic ripple effect of words. Imagine if, before spewing a half-baked retort based on a headline skimmed with one eye on the television, we paused, breathed, and considered the weight of our words and the comment we felt mindlessly compelled to spew from our smartphones. Right speech isn’t an archaic muzzle but a revolutionary act of freedom from the knee-jerk need to be part of the noise, to throw your single penny into a fountain overflowing with coins.

Scroll through any comment section and you’ll witness a battleground of unbridled tongues (or fingers, in this case). Each comment is often more about the commenter’s eagerness to speak than any meaningful engagement with the article, and often telling others more about themselves than they realize. The endless stream of terse comments is mostly worthless idle chatter. (Did you read the article, Karen?) It’s as if the act of commenting is an end in and of itself—a noisy echo chamber where listening and understanding are casualties trampled underfoot by the rush to be heard and seen. 

Although it would fall under the warning against idle chatter, I’m not talking about your “So cute!” comment on Aunt Janet’s 400th picture of her cat’s lazy eye. The internet needs more lazy-eyed cat pictures and Aunt Janets. And in those instances, social media is working as it should—connecting us to family and friends scattered across a busy, noisy, and often harsh world.  

The drive to voice our opinion that I’m referencing, even when it’s half-formed, clashes with our Buddhist contemplative tradition, which teaches that every action—including speech—should arise from a place of awareness. What would happen if we treated every comment as if it were a pebble dropped in water, its ripples reaching far and wide? The same could be said for every social media post, but that is a whole other psychological rabbit hole.

Restraint as rebellion, attention as an act of revolution.

The precepts built around the teaching of right speech are not simply a means to shackle the unruly but a way to unchain ourselves from our basest impulses. By connecting with this moral imperative, we learn to choose words that enlighten, engage, and encourage. Our words may even ignite emotions in others or trouble them deeply, but they should come from a clear sense of awareness and intention. This isn’t control; it’s liberation—a path to awakened interaction that can turn the comment section from a ridiculous romper room of Pavlovian responses into a space for introspective dialogue that furthers the dharma (I can dream).

For those brave minds willing to swim against the rough rapids of hasty and, let’s say it—worthless—commenting, here’s a radical proposal: read the article. Fully. Reflect. Then—if you must—leave a comment that contributes, that respects the silent work of reading, and that honors the exchange of ideas. This is right speech for the digital age—restraint as rebellion, attention as an act of revolution.

The comment section is a microcosm of the world. It can be a wasteland of worthless words or a refuge of thoughtful exchange. By applying right speech, we can choose the latter. We can choose to be part of a solution that reveres silence as much as speaking, that values reflection over reaction, and that places understanding at the heart of communication. Or choose the wasteland of hungry ghosts wandering in a state of self-inflicted ignorance. Choice is the key operative here.

So the next time you’re about to launch into a comment, pause. Think. Reflect. Your words have power. Use them wisely and intentionally. This is right speech. Each moment, each action is a great sutra unfolding before us, teaching the dharma. Your digital footprint reveals the path you’re on, one comment at a time. And be careful! The author might be lurking and waiting to pounce—and you don’t want to be that Chad they call out with the burn, “Did you even read the article?”

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What do we do when we do find ourselves experiencing unwholesome states? For example, what happens when we see something that triggers an unpleasant feeling, and an unwholesome state arises in the mind? [We can consider] pahana, which means removal or elimination. You might think about it as selective thinking. Instead of thinking or entertaining whatever thought arises in the mind, we can actively generate and choose to think the thoughts we want to think.

[To this end,] the Buddha speaks of samma sankappa, which is sometimes called right thinking or right motivation and is part of the eightfold path. Within this he gives us three thoughts that we can focus on. The first is nekkhamma, or renunciation. The second is avyapada, a thought of non-hatred or non-ill will. (If this sounds too abstract, think of it as metta, lovingkindness, or benevolence.) The third is ahimsa, nonviolence or non-cruelty, which is a thought of compassion. 

We see this advice play out in a sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya called the Dvedhavitakka Sutta, or the sutta on two types of thinking, when the Buddha was reflecting on the time before he became a Buddha. (He says, “When I was only a bodhisattva…” Bodhisattva means someone aspiring to be a Buddha, particularly someone on the path to becoming a sammasambuddha [or a fully enlightened one].)

The Buddha was conducting experiments in his mind, and one of his first experiments was meditating on greediness, hatred, and violence. When he let these thoughts play out in his mind, he noticed he didn’t feel good. He wasn’t getting further in his spiritual quest, and he was getting even further away from what he was trying to achieve.

So, then he said, “I’m going to put those thoughts aside. Putting those aside, let me cultivate the opposite kind of thoughts: Instead of greed, a thought of renunciation, or letting go; instead of anger, a thought of lovingkindness; and instead of cruelty or violence, a thought of compassion or kindness towards others.” When he practiced this way, he noticed that he felt better and was able to overcome thoughts of greed, hatred, and cruelty.

We see two things in this sutta: sabbapapassa akaranam, avoiding the bad, greedy, angry, and cruel thoughts; and ku salassa upasampada: generating wholesome thoughts, or thoughts of renunciation, lovingkindness, and compassion.

We can also connect this to the first two verses of the Dhammapada. As the Buddha tells us in the first verse of the Dhammapada, “If you think in an unskillful way, then suffering follows you.” Then he says, “But if you think in a skillful way, happiness follows you.” Happiness will come to those who think in the proper or wholesome way, which is thinking thoughts of renunciation, lovingkindness, and compassion. 

We don’t try to fight unwholesome thoughts, resist them, or push them away. It’s very hard not to think a thought that you’re not supposed to think. If you say, “Don’t think of an elephant,” you start thinking about an elephant. So instead of doing that, we think of something skillful, nice, pleasant, or pleasurable, even. We think of something that’s going to bring tranquility and relaxation (passaddhi), something that’s going to bring joy and rapture (piti), or something that’s going to bring happiness (sukha).

And it’s not just about saying in your mind, “May all beings be well, happy, comfortable, and peaceful. ” Then we’re just parroting, and a parrot doesn’t really understand what it’s saying. The important part is that thinking in this way and using this concept to trigger and feel that blameless happiness: passaddhi, piti, and sukha in the mind.

These thoughts of renunciation and letting go feel very good. It’s a blameless pleasure because they’re not dependent on sensuality. They don’t bring harm to anyone else or ourselves. So we need to rejoice—anumodana—in these wholesome actions. Even thinking in this way is a meritorious deed. It brings a lot of merit, or punna. It creates a lot of good actions, or kusalakamma.

In other words, when we sit and practice and think like this, we really want to get the taste of it. We want to feel it in the body. We want to feel that lovingkindness and compassion, connect with it, soak it up, and let it cover our whole body. You can indulge in it because there’s nothing bad about it. No one’s getting hurt. In fact, it’s going to help you speak kindly, behave kindly, and be in this world in a more peaceful, compassionate way. 

So don’t be afraid of any pleasant experiences that arise. Actually focus on that pleasantness. Focus on that feeling of joy. Focus on that experience, and then you can just leave the thinking behind. You can push the cognitive aspect of the practice of “may I be well, may other beings be well, may they be free from suffering” to the background and get into the experiential part of lovingkindness and compassion. By doing that, not only will you be able to replace unwholesome states in the mind, but you’ll also be able to protect yourself because when you’re in this wholesome experience, it is very difficult for an unwholesome experience to take over.

♦

Adapted from Bhante Sanathavihari’s “Right Effort: Understanding an Often Overlooked Mental Discipline on the Eightfold Path.”

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This series will introduce the four mental trainings for overcoming unwholesome states and reaching wholesome ones that can provide the serenity of mind for further progress in concentrative and insight practices.

Bhante Sanathavihari is a Mexican-American Theravada monk at the Sarathchandra Buddhist Center in North Hollywood, California. He is a student of the late Bhante Punnaji, a U.S. Air Force veteran, and the director of Casa de Bhavana, an outreach project to bring the dharma to the Spanish-speaking world.

***

Texts referenced in the videos:

Video 1
Dhammapada verses 1 and 2
Mahapadana sutta, Digha Nikaya 14
Sangarava sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 100

Video 2
Pabhassara sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 1.49-52

Video 3
Dvedhavitakka sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 19
Vitakkasanthana sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 20

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Many years ago, when I was walking on the South Devon coastal path [in England] with my mother, I was suddenly struck by what it meant to walk on a path. For some reason, I became aware that while I was on a path, I was necessarily heading toward a destination. A path, all paths, have some sort of purpose. They get you somewhere. You have a sense of direction. At the same time, I realized that in walking along a path, I do so without impediment. There’s nothing getting in my way, no obstacles, which means that I’m able to get into my rhythm or pace. So a path is a space of freedom—a space where movement is possible. 

A path is also something that connects us to a human, and even an animal, community because paths, particularly trails in the countryside, are there only because of people having gone before. It’s the tread of their feet that keeps the path open, even though they are long gone and away from view. At the same time, as we walk that path in their wake, we are serving to keep that path open for those who will follow. 

When we talk of the eightfold path, it is helpful to reflect on the very metaphor of “path” itself, which we find in all traditions. What is distinctive about the eightfold path in Buddhism is that it is also described as a middle path, or a middle way. We could even translate that as a centered path or a central way. It’s understood as a path that avoids slipping into dead ends. In other words, the middle way is a path that actually will get us somewhere. 

Of course many of the paths we follow in our lives are not actually paths at all because they don’t get us to where we would like them to get us. They don’t fulfill the desires that we hope they will. So often, we pursue a course in our lives, yet we find ourselves back where we started. So often, we go around in circles and keep meeting these dead ends. But the middle way and the eightfold path are also described with the metaphor of a stream. There’s something about this path that is dynamic, or flowing. The person who has entered the eightfold path is one who is said to have entered a stream. In other words, a stream is a flowing body of water that is held between its two banks that allows it that same sense of direction—that same sense of freedom of movement. In some ways, too, being water, [the stream—or path—is] something that nourishes society, community, and sentient beings.

For me, the eightfold path is part of a much longer “pathing” process that I call the “four tasks.” The four tasks describe in detail how this eightfold path arises. The first task is to embrace life, to fully understand the condition we’re in, but in a nonreactive way to pay attention with mindfulness, awareness, or sensitivity. That opens up a far greater awareness of how we react. We start noticing how often we encounter a situation, and it feels a certain way to us. That triggers a reaction: We either want it, we don’t like it, or we’re bored by it. So we begin to become aware of these reactive processes. 

The second task is to let [our reactions] be or let them go, so we don’t get caught up and entangled in their narrative. Instead, we just remain mindfully conscious that this is how we’re reacting. That awareness of reactivity, that letting it be, rather than jumping on board and following, is what opens up the possibility of experiencing a nonreactive space. That nonreactive space is of the nature of nirvana itself. It’s the absence of greed, hatred, fear, or confusion. It may be momentary, but as we touch that openness, and that spaciousness, it makes us aware of our freedom to live differently—to not just be driven by our habits, but to respond to life situations in a way that’s not just a habitual reactive engagement with the situation, but one that allows for greater responsiveness. It’s here, [in this third task,] that the eightfold path begins. 

The fourth task is to cultivate this path and to bring it into being. It’s not reducible simply to being a good meditator or to developing certain spiritual ideas, or to having certain mystical insights (although all of those things can well be part of this process). The eightfold path highlights very clearly that this practice is one that engages the totality of what it means to be human. 

The Buddha illustrates this process of cultivation with the example of a chicken and her eggs. Clearly, the Buddha paid attention to ordinary farming activities that he probably would have encountered throughout his life, and would have been aware that when a hen is sitting on eggs in her nest, she is slowly turning and moving them around to ensure each egg is the same temperature and has the same possibility of being warmed in such a way that the little chick can then break out of the shell. This analogy is presented as a way in which to work with these different bodies of practices. 

I’m selecting the eightfold path, one of the ones mentioned in that discourse, to show that the order in which we traditionally might have been presented with these ideas is open to modification. Indeed, perhaps, in our time, we need to rethink some of the elements of the eightfold path to highlight those which have been made more marginal, and to reconsider how this path could best be configured for our time and our world today. As an experiment with this egg-moving metaphor, I’d like to suggest another way we could look at the eight branches of the path, starting with our perspective, what is sometimes called the right view, or our way of seeing ourselves in the world, and then seeing that perspective as what stimulates and opens up our imagination as we begin to move toward a response. [Then we move onto] how that imagination allows us to then engage ourselves with the tasks at hand through effort, through application itself, and how that can then lead us into a more refined mindfulness, or collectiveness, that enables us to be present and focused. And when we move into the actual response itself, we do so by communication, through our speech, voice, work, and those activities that really make our lives come fully alive—whether that work be one of a teacher, artist, carer, or businessperson. A person who feels a vocation for any particular way of life does so because that is what speaks to his or her needs most deeply. I feel that this way of living, outlined by these different branches, has, as its goal, in a way, the survival of life on Earth. And at our present time, this survival is not just about you, and me, and human beings, but all creatures whose lives have flourished on this planet, but whose lives are now understood to be under threat. So my sense of the eightfold path is that it allows this kind of thinking and questioning to have a framework and perspective. 

♦

Adapted from “Reimagining the Eightfold Path,” Tricycle’s newest online course, which launches November 14. Watch Stephen Batchelor’s original teaching below and learn more about the course here.

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“Meditation” is a vague term.

Even in English it has two opposing meanings: thinking and not-thinking. But unsurprisingly, since the word meditation is derived from Latin, the term can be even more confusing when it comes to Buddhist meditation and its recent offshoot, secular mindfulness.

In the Pali canon, there’s no single word for meditation. Mindfulness (sati) is part of vipassana bhavana, or the cultivation of insight. It’s also part of the eightfold path—though the Pali word “sati” may or may not correspond to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s helpful definition of nonjudgmental, moment-to-moment noticing.

But sati is only one of the meditative elements of the eightfold path—the other major one is samadhi, or concentration. And here’s where things get interesting. In most of the Pali canon’s discussion of samadhi, it’s described not simply as one-pointed concentration in general, but as the ability to enter the four jhanas—distinct, concentrated mind states—in particular.

Eventually, dhyana, the Sanskrit for jhana, became chan in Chinese, and later zen in Japanese. These words became roughly synonymous with meditation itself and later identified with various specific meditation practices such as zazen.

But a funny thing happened to the jhanas within Theravadan traditions, particularly in the “dry insight” Burmese lineages that evolved into Western insight meditation and from there into secular mindfulness: jhana practically disappeared.

Why? Perhaps the problem is that the meaning of jhana was never entirely clear. The suttas do describe what these states are like. The second jhana, for example, is often described as “gaining of inner stillness and oneness of mind . . . without applied and sustained thinking, and in which there are joy and pleasure born of concentration.” Sounds nice, right? Dozens of such descriptions appear in the Pali canon.

But how do I get there, exactly? How do I know it’s a jhana and not just a passing pleasant mind state? What does it mean to “enter and remain” in that state?

Commentaries, especially the fifth-century Visuddhimagga, said that for jhana to be real, it has to be a wholly immersive and absorptive mind state. If you can hear anything, think anything, or even note the passage of time, you weren’t experiencing jhana.

With that high of a standard, cultivating jhana became a practice only for elites. Regular chumps like you and me didn’t have a chance.

Thus, while developing concentration remained central to these forms of Buddhist practice, jhana itself did not. This was an unfortunate development for two reasons.

First, given that the Buddha spells out exactly what he means by Right Concentration [one of the required spokes of the eightfold path]— cultivating jhana—surely it must be a mistake to jettison the practice entirely. Why would the Buddha say that jhana is essential and that the path is accessible to anyone, and then prescribe a practice that is inaccessible to all but a few?

Moreover, as my teacher Leigh Brasington summarized in his recent book, Right Concentration, there are numerous instances of nonabsorptive jhana in the suttas themselves. In one such account, practitioners talk to one another while experiencing jhana, which hardly comports with the notion that jhana is all-absorptive. (The Visuddhimagga says they must have been psychic.)

Now, it’s clear that jhana can be absorptive, and it is deeply profound when it is. I’ve had those experiences on long retreats, and many teachers still teach that way today. But jhana is also powerful without full absorption. As the Thai Forest teacher Ajahn Chah put it, the four jhanas are like four pools of water; they can be deeper or shallower, but they’re the same four pools.

Which is the second reason why it’s a shame to jettison jhana: because jhana is good for you. In my experience practicing and teaching the jhanas, there are numerous benefits to both beginner and advanced meditators. The states themselves are so profound as to be transformative in themselves, especially for shaking the mind free from attachment to other pleasant mind states, whether spiritual or pharmacological or otherwise. The pleasure they bring is regarded as “pure.”

And then there’s their main benefit: they spur you toward awakening. In one famous Tibetan analogy, building concentration is like sharpening the sword that cuts off the head of delusion. On its own, concentration doesn’t get you anywhere. But concentration, and jhana in particular, can make any meditation practice easier, sharper, and more effective.

There are two other, more modern reasons why a contemporary meditator should consider adding jhana to their repertoire.

The first is variety. We all get in dharma ruts now and then. Practices get stale, and even sitting with the staleness gets stale. Cultivating jhana really is different from mindfulness and other popular forms of meditation; it inclines the mind differently, builds different skills, yields different fruit. And while it’s difficult to attain jhana off retreat, it’s not hard to translate jhana skills into everyday life, infusing regular sits with concentration or noticing the wholesome feelings of bliss, equanimity, and so on when they arise. Jhana spices up meditation.

Cultivating jhana also, I think, addresses some of the big reasons laypeople meditate today: stress reduction, relaxation, and the pursuit of bliss. Despite its use for stress reduction, mindfulness done properly can often be stress inducing, as you see harmful habits of mind, deconstruct the self, or notice how everything arises and passes so quickly. I actually think that it’s the concentration aspect of mindfulness meditation—the calming, centering, focusing part—that actually holds appeal for most beginning meditators.

Of course, meditation’s not meant to be a narcotic. But most beginners are experiencing real dukkha [suffering] and they are searching for ways to lessen it. Mindfulness, meta-cognition, insight, and building witness consciousness are great ways to do so. But so are building concentration, focus, and calm—and that’s where jhana meditation excels.

And not just for beginners! Personally, I have a “day job” as a political pundit and columnist. I can vouch from firsthand experience that building samadhi is a key part of my own meditation toolkit. Creating islands of calm amid the insanity of our culture enables me to rest, recharge, and go back to the work of justice.

Leigh Brasington authorized me to teach jhana in the lineage of his teacher, the Ven. Ayya Khema. This method cultivates jhana as described in the Pali canon, rather than in the commentaries. In my experience, jhana meditation can lead to transformative experiences, aid in the work of insight, add variety to meditation practice, and provide valuable tools for modern life. It’s a vital part of the eightfold path.

Which I guess is why it’s there.

This article was originally published September 22, 2016.

The post Jhana: The Spice Your Meditation Has Been Missing appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Among the very first teachings the Buddha offered to his students—which would provide a foundation for the entirety of Buddhist training—were the guidelines for ethical living known as the five precepts. The Buddha knew that applying them to your thoughts, words, and actions every day, no matter how challenging they might be, is a sure way to improve your life by helping to resolve much of the emotional struggle and stress that cloud the mind. The precepts are integral to the Buddha’s path of practice, called the noble eightfold path, which guides the practice of virtue alongside the development of mental discipline and wisdom.

The precepts are usually recited as follows: I undertake to . . .

1. refrain from taking life (even an insect’s);
2. refrain from stealing or taking what is not freely given;
3. refrain from illicit sexual conduct (this includes sex with people who are already married or in relationships as well as with minors, and any other kind of sex that causes harm to oneself or others);
4. refrain from unskillful speech, including telling lies, gossiping, and speaking harshly;
5. abstain from taking intoxicants that cause heedlessness.

Much can be said about each individual precept and how abiding by them helps cut away the complications and entanglements and the resulting suffering we concoct for ourselves. Even people who don’t feel ready to meditate or take on other aspects of Buddhist practice can begin with the precepts and see positive changes in their circumstances and state of mind right away.

Some teachers recommend starting with a single precept—such as the pledge to refrain from lying—and practicing with that for a period of time. As the Thai Buddhist master Ajaan Fuang Jotiko once said, “if you can’t control your mouth, how can you ever learn to control your mind?” For most of us, it’s a sufficiently challenging place to begin.

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Mastering our minds begins with mastering our mouths. We spend the first 10 years of our lives learning “elementary right speech”: how to interact politely, respectfully, and inoffensively; when to speak, when not to speak. Then we spend another decade learning to express more complex feelings and ideas to others. We might call this intermediate right speech, although what we study even on these two preliminary levels is bottomless. Even something as simple as when to speak and when not to speak can’t be determined by a formula; it is a skill refined over a lifetime.

If you want to stop suffering, the Buddha taught, there is an eightfold path of practice to that end: right view, right motivation, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. While the word right: carries connotations of orthodox correctness, it is a misleading translation of the Pali word samma, which means perfected, completed, or consummated. The eight limbs of the path are not eight steps to be taken consecutively, but are to be worked on simultaneously. Like the eight branches to one trunk or eight tributaries flowing into one river, each is essential to the elimination of suffering. Of these limbs, none seem plainer than “right speech” or samma-vaca, yet samma-vaca is a powerful practice, and one that we can do anywhere, anytime, and with anyone.

Related: The Mindfulness of the Buddha 

“And what is samma-vaca?” asks the Buddha in The Discourse on Mindfulness Meditation. “Refraining from lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, and meaningless speech.”

The process of learning to improve ourselves through language can be thought of as advanced right speech. In this practice, we become more consciously skilled with our words, aware of the effects they can have on ourselves and others, and alert to the ways that our thoughts and statements can grow into habits. We avoid speech that makes us “impure”—confused, muddy, self-evading, and unable to separate truth from untruth.

Impurity, according to the Buddha, can come about in four ways. The first is telling falsehoods, by which we deliberately relax our commitment to truth and eventually even become so tied to subtly evolved fictions that we can no longer notice when we might be fooling ourselves. The second is saying things that are certain to cause strife, contention, and bad feeling, thus destroying social harmony by creating a miasma of mistrust and at the same time turning ourselves into someone who delights in dragging other people down. The third way is uttering words designed to hurt and upset, which sows internal strife in those around us and undermines their capacity for contentment. And the fourth destructive way may be the hardest for a modern person to understand: filling precious silence with babble that matters to no one, just to hear our own voices or to cover over a silence in which anxiety might arise. (Accustomed as we are to the sounds of entertainment and commentary, silence can disturb us; we find it awkward.) The effect of these together is unproductive emotional entanglement and mental confusion.

In contrast, when we learn to be more disciplined and scrupulous with our words, we find ourselves becoming better people. In The Discourse on Mindfulness Meditation, the Buddha says: “And how is one made pure in four ways by verbal action? There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech.”

This is the rare person who can always be counted on to be truthful and honest; who never speaks in such a way as to cause discord and is both good at and enjoys making friendships; someone whom people routinely seek out because of her sincerity, kindness, good nature, and encouragement; and one who is always to the point and worth listening to. This is an image of a wonderful, lovable human being—the kind of person we would want for a friend, and also the one that we aspire to become.

Related: Why We Must Practice the Art of Good Conversation 

The beauty of such a path is that it can be practiced. At the beginning of each day, we can articulate to ourselves an intention to work on the four aspects of samma-vaca with the particular people and situations we come across. Before we go to sleep, we can reflect on our conversations, evaluate in detail whether we succeeded or not, and then decide what we need to do to improve. It is the conscious application of our reflective intelligence that makes this a practice and not just the spontaneous play of natural gifts. Did I tell the truth? Was I right to tell my friend X what my other friend Y had said about him? Did I hurt W’s feelings and make it harder for him to speak with me? Did I just waste an hour chatting about politics on Facebook?

Underlying all of these queries is the larger question about motivation: why did I speak, and what in me needed to say this? In thinking about these things and trying to cultivate lucidity regarding our own actions, we gradually become smarter about ourselves, more sensitive to other people, and more nuanced in our actions. When we do, we are able to, as the Buddha says: “speak words worth treasuring, seasonable, reasonable, circumscribed, connected with the goal.”

Speaking well depends on listening well, and learning how to listen may be one of the hardest things for a human being to accomplish. Impatience, arrogance, desire, and fear can make us poor listeners. We are impatient, eager to say our own thing because we have some other task to check off. We can be arrogant, assuming we are qualified to judge others or that we already “know” both what the other person will say and what it is worth. We want to hear ourselves corroborated, and this desire prevents us from truly listening or causes us to be fearful because there are things we know we don’t want to hear. When we are silent, is it because we are listening or because we are waiting to speak? When we speak, are we responding to the person in front of us or merely reacting or deflecting? If we are habitually not responsive to people and situations, we cannot be sincere practitioners of samma-vaca. It will be obvious that our silences are also included in this, because all silence expresses something, and some silences are more eloquent than words. To the extent that many silences are in fact preparations for speech, words exist in a continuum from intuition, to thought, to utterance—which means that the thoughtful practitioner of samma-vaca must attend to what precedes speaking as much as to speaking itself.

Thus the art of speaking well includes the complementary art of listening well. Both of these arts cannot be taught as a technique or strategy to master. For example, we can know everything there is to know about different methods of beginning an argument, but how do we know when to start and how to choose the words that will move this particular person? We can have a large enough vocabulary and wide experience of life to understand the words that are spoken to us, but how do we intuit the real intentions behind the words—such as whether the speaker is friendly or unfriendly toward us—let alone understand why the intentions are what they are? If we have no insight into these deeper matters, we are unlikely to address this interlocutor effectively in speech.

But how do we learn such things? There is no shortcut; we learn from paying attention to every interaction and reflecting afterwards on what went right or wrong. We learn from mistakes, and also from letting others point out our mistakes: when we said things poorly, when we misunderstood, when we completely misjudged another person, when we failed to sustain a harmonious relationship. Mistakes and failures make up the rich seedbed of self-reflection and improvement. Because of this, samma-vaca is a practice that will tend to make a person more grounded, generous, humble, attentive, observant, present—and at the same time, more reflective, imaginative, far-sighted, and open to other people and possibilities. It is a richly rewarding practice for a thoughtful person and a salutary discipline for a less thoughtful person, because it encompasses so many other virtues. Indeed, samma-vaca is a mindfulness practice that gives instant feedback, because it occurs in the moment, with other people.

Every human being can do this practice; each of us is capable of trying to listen well, speak well, and self-reflect. Even when we find ourselves perplexed in certain situations and unable to see clearly, we can always consult our friends, who can be helpful in getting us to see what we did wrong and how we could do better. In the Pali Discourses, the Buddha’s gift is twofold: a vision and a practice. He always gives us something we can do—indeed, that we can start doing now, wherever we are, by ourselves. There is no need to wait for anything or anyone.

[This story was first published in 2017.]

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When my typing fingers, trying to keep up with my thoughts, replaced the d in mindfulness with an e, a new word lassoed 30 years of striving to be a good Buddhist into neon shorthand. It was suddenly clear that the way forward might entail a U-turn, the opposite direction of my earnest—and, dare I say, ambitious—efforts. Years before my plunge into Buddhism, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa warned against this common pitfall for aspirants on the spiritual path: “The problem is that ego can convert anything to its own use,” he said, “even spirituality.”

A child of the sixties, I came to Buddhism wanting to get something out of it—a wholesome, calming praxis in daily life without the baggage of dogma, as well as an authenticity and freedom that transcended the tyranny of consumerism. I also came to the practice with a long list of things to get rid of, like grief, shame, existential angst, and relentless discursive thinking. The insight when my finger slipped: the same determination I apply to my quotidian goals too often subsumes my spiritual aspirations. Busy with a to-do checklist off the cushion; busy with another list on the cushion.

Tony Robbins, a modern-day Dale Carnegie, trumpets: “We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.” I, for one, have happily marinated in similar notions, and, to be truthful, still find them heady and intoxicating. I know I’m not the only Western worker bee to have unconsciously turned myself into a lifelong self-improvement project to plug up a sense of lack, dissolve an unpleasant feeling, shore up the building materials needed to construct the best Me. With decades of practice, I’ve curated and acquired a collection of Buddhist tools from around the globe: some Burmese noting here and there, a variety of breath techniques from the Mindfulness of Breathing Sutta, Tibetan tonglen practice to deal with my anger at the news, yogic chakra concentration to reel me back into my body. And mindfulness, always.

Guiding us to shape our future by thought and action is certainly a central concern of Buddhism. But combine this with American individualism, our can-do verve and penchant for self-creation, for becoming something greater and better, and the result is a true stumbling block for practitioners. The Buddha had a word for the way we condition our future: bhava. The word is related to the verb bhavati, “one is,” or to “one becomes.” The Buddha was especially interested in bhava—the ephemeral, contingent activity wherein a form or identity exists in continual flux. Most of us, however, believing our self-identities to be fixed, are pushed and pulled through time by incessant desires and their raft of karmic consequences. In contrast, the noble eightfold path, the core of Buddhist training and discipline, is a rigorous commitment that can transform bhava so that craving is less and less in the driver’s seat as we step into our future.

What is the art of bhava, becoming, without the individual holding court? Ajahn Sucitto, a teacher in the Theravada tradition, says he is often reluctant to give meditation instructions because of the “who” within the student receiving the instruction, who gets immediately involved in trying to make experience match his teachings. I know this self intimately: she believes in managing her experience, and her task proves to be a full-time job.

In the Theravada tradition, my home tradition, a practitioner must distinguish between two very different motivations of action: tanha, craving originating from self-interest, and a more joyful, spiritually wholesome effort, chanda. Bhikkhu Nisabho (my son, now a monk) points to simple, traditional practices like generosity, adhering to the five moral precepts, chanting, and watching the breath as useful ways to hold minefulness in check: “Using wisdom to surround ourselves with structures that support practice is very helpful, as otherwise we have to rely on extreme selfing to protect and bolster practice in the face of the contrary, overstimulated conditions of modern life.” In other words, we need aids to backpedal out of our cultural habits that rely on individual efficacy and willpower in every arena from work to spirituality.

In the Mahayana traditions, which I draw upon often, an altruistic intention is explicit from the start and becomes formal with the taking of the bodhisattva vow, the commitment to put the welfare of others before oneself. Venerable Thubten Chonyi, a nun at Sravasti Abbey in Washington, told me: “Motivation is absolutely critical—whether it comes from a Buddhist or religious or secular worldview. If my practice is about my relief, it’s all about me. If, for a few moments or more, I recognize that as I am relieved, it helps others—my family, the people I work with, the street person on my corner, and the barista I visit most often—then the practice is already bigger than just me.”

Through prolonged practice, we meditators may begin to recognize that we are simply worn out from the striving—and thus open a door to deeper understanding of the dharma. All traditions affirm that we are never practicing for ourselves alone, but I, at least, need to remind myself of that more often. To begin to shift our practice accordingly lets our identity rest somewhere other than on I, me, mine.

The path to the end of suffering engages a becoming where the mind is steady and familiar with samadhi, meditative absorption. We cannot arrive at a serenity of effort through a frenzied campaign of self-improvement. As I once heard the Buddhist teacher Frank Osteseski say: “Peace and stillness are not something you can create: instead, we notice them when we stop trying to make things happen.”

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Concentration is the secret ingredient of meditation, the backbone of the entire endeavor. It is the simplest, most elementary, most concrete, most practical, and most ancient therapeutic technique in the Buddhist repertoire. It is a means of temporarily dispelling the repetitive thoughts of the everyday mind, a way of opening the psyche to new and unscripted experiences. Although it follows mindfulness on the eightfold path, it is generally taught before mindfulness when one is learning to meditate. It is such an essential introduction to Buddhist practice that its closing place on the eightfold path does not make sense at first glance. But concentration needs to be understood in the context of the entire path if it is not to become a distraction in itself. Concentration is “right” when it connects with the other branches of the whole. It is “right” when it demonstrates the feasibility of training the mind, when it supports the investigation of impermanence, when it erodes selfish preoccupation, and when it reveals the benefits of surrender. It is not “right” when it is seen as an end in itself and when it is used to avoid painful truths. One can hide out in the peaceful states that meditative concentration makes possible, but in the context of the eightfold path, this is considered a mistake.

Concentration, from a Buddhist perspective, means keeping one’s attention steady on a single object such as the breath or a sound for extended periods of time. This is not something that we do ordinarily, and it is not something that comes easily. Those who try to fix their attention in this way for even five minutes will see this for themselves. Try to follow your breath and see what happens. Note the sensation of the in-breath and repeat the word “in” to yourself. Do the same with the out-breath and repeat the word “out.” Keep the mental label in the background and the bulk of your awareness on the direct physical sensation of the breath. If you are like most people, after successfully noting a breath or two, your usual subconscious inner world will reassert itself.  Thinking, planning, fantasizing, and worrying will rush to fill the void, noises from the outside world will pull you in, and five minutes will be over before you know it.  The mind does not become concentrated just because we tell it to.

But right concentration asks us to persevere. Beginning meditators struggle with this very simple task. Whenever they notice that their attention has strayed, they return it to the central object. Lapses in attention happen not once or twice but over and over and over again. Sometimes people notice right away, and sometimes not for a long while, but right concentration suggests that we do not judge ourselves for our failings. Ancient texts compare the process of concentration to the taming of a wild animal. It is a difficult endeavor, full of ups and downs, but one that yields reliable results if practiced diligently and with patience.

As concentration increases, the mind and body relax. Thoughts diminish, emotional pressures weaken, and a kind of calm takes over.  The mind gradually comes under some degree of control and settles down.  The Buddha compared this process to the smelting of gold. When its superficial contaminants are removed, gold becomes light, soft, malleable, and bright. Its brilliance comes forth, and it begins to shine.

The benefits of concentration for the management of stressful situations are now widely acknowledged. I spoke recently with a young man newly diagnosed with colon cancer who had to go through a number of tests, scans, and procedures in rapid succession. His wife was interested in meditation and had already begun to explore it, but he had other things to do when he was healthy. Upon receiving the diagnosis, however, he needed something to help him, and he quickly became proficient in using concentration to calm his anxiety.  This was incredibly useful. When inside the PET scan machine, for example, where he had to lie still for long periods of time in a close space, he was able to watch his breath or scan the sensations in his body while letting the machine do its thing. It was just like a long, enforced meditation, he told me cheerfully, and it was fine. It is good to have this ability, to know from experience that it is possible; it is incredibly useful in all kinds of uncomfortable situations.

Concentration is not just a method of managing stress, however; it is also an incubator of self-esteem.  This is less easily measured but just as important. I found this out for myself during one of my first extended explorations of meditation. Up until this first retreat, I had tried to watch my breath with varying degrees of success. I was taken with the challenge and interested in the underlying philosophy of Buddhism, but my immediate experience of meditation had mostly made me aware of the rather mundane nature of my own mind. The more I tried to watch my breath, the more I saw of the incessant, routine, repetitive, and self-serving thoughts running through the undercurrents of my psyche.

At this retreat, however, after about three or four days of practice, things started to shift. I remember sitting in the meditation hall and suddenly being able to focus. All the effort to locate the breath and stay steady with it no longer seemed necessary. It was just there. Although I was remarkably devoid of my usual litany of thoughts, I was wide awake and clearheaded. My eyes were closed in the darkened hall, but light started to pour into my consciousness. Literally. I was seeing light while resting the bulk of my attention in the breath.  The light lifted me in some way and I had that feeling I sometimes get, when very moved, of the hairs of my body standing on end. A strong feeling of love came next—not love for anyone or anything in particular, just a strong sense of loving.  This all lasted for a while. I could get up and walk around and then, when I sat back down, it would be there again. It was as if the curtains in my mind had parted and something more fundamental was shining through. It was tremendously reassuring. Many of my doubts about myself— as inadequate, unworthy, or insufficient—seemed, as a result, to be superfluous. I knew, from the inside, that they were stories I had been repeating to myself, but not necessarily the truth. The love pouring out of me seemed infinitely more real.

While this experience lasted for hours, it did not, of course, last forever. It was one of the more dramatic things to ever happen to me while meditating, and in fact I subsequently spent a fair amount of time trying to get it back. But its impact is as strong today as it was when it first happened. I know for a fact that behind my day-to-day preoccupations lies something more fundamental. While I have changed over the years, and while change (as we know from right view) is the nature of things, this underlying, almost invisible, feeling is there in the background. Concentration revealed it to me and sometimes allows it to reemerge. At times, with my family, with my patients, when listening to music or walking in the countryside, it peeks through of its own accord.

Clinging takes many forms, and the desire for inner peace can sometimes be just as neurotic as other, more obvious addictions.

A couple of years after this pivotal experience, when I was in medical school and doing one of my first monthlong rotations in psychiatry, I had an individual tutorial with an esteemed Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. John Nemiah, who was teaching me about a rare syndrome then called “conversion hysteria.” In this disorder, patients present with physical, often neurological, symptoms, like paralysis or shaking fits, for which no organic cause can be found. In many such cases, the theory goes, the actual problem is some kind of anxiety, but the anxiety is “converted” into physical symptoms because it is too overwhelming to experience in its raw psychological form. The diagnosis is rarely used today; it has been replaced in many instances by the term “dissociative disorder,” and some clinicians now believe that the symptoms can be traced back to episodes of sexual abuse. But the underlying theory about it remains essentially unchanged. Overwhelming feelings are somehow displaced onto, or into, the body. Physical symptoms emerge that have no direct and obvious cause. Post-traumatic stress might be thought of as a contemporary version of this. Traumatic events, never fully acknowledged, come back to haunt people in the form of seemingly inexplicable symptoms that arise as if out of the blue. Dr. Nemiah showed me some films of patients from the 1950s with conversion symptoms and then questioned me about them. He was trying to teach me not just about this particular syndrome but about the concept of the unconscious. If a patient’s symptoms are expressions of underlying anxiety, he wanted to know, how do they get “converted” into physical form? How does this happen?

“What is the unconscious?” Dr. Nemiah asked me. This was a central question for a young would-be psychiatrist in those days, and I sensed that his evaluation of me depended upon my answer.

I thought immediately of my retreat, of the curtains parting and the light shining through, of my understanding that the narrow world of my day-to-day preoccupations did not have to define me. In Dr. Nemiah’s world, the unconscious was mostly thought of as the dark and lurking place from which dreams emerge, but, as much as I would come to respect that point of view, this was not how I was thinking at the time.

“The unconscious is the repository of mystery,” I responded.

I remember how much Dr. Nemiah liked my answer despite being unaware of what I was actually thinking about. I was not about to tip my hand to him about my Buddhist leanings despite my admiration for his clinical acumen. Buddhism, at that time in my life, was not something I was talking about to my superiors, especially those who were going to give me an evaluation. But my answer worked just as well in his world as it did in my own. Mystery encompasses the dark as well as the light.

As an experienced and erudite psychiatrist, Dr. Nemiah was trying to give me a feel for how little we, as supposed experts, understand the recesses of the mind. The unconscious is a mystery, and it remains one all these years later. In bringing Buddhism to a Western audience, I am in a similar situation. As much as I may talk to my friends and patients about how concentration opens doors into unexpected areas of the psyche, nothing beats experiencing it for oneself. Concentration is a channel into something we do not have exact words for. The unconscious? Mystery? The imagination? Love and light? It is tempting to turn whatever it is into something more concrete than we can actually apprehend.

Right concentration argues against doing this. I think that is why it is saved for the last step instead of being talked about at the beginning. Right concentration does not want us to get attached to it. It does not want us to turn it into an object of worship. Use it to free yourself, but don’t turn it into another thing. Allow it to remain unpredictable.

My Buddhist teachers, in making this point, chuckle at a story they often repeat. A man who successfully completed a three-month silent retreat came running down the street in its immediate aftermath screaming, “It didn’t work! It didn’t work!” Under the spell of developed concentration and enveloped within the silence of the retreat, this man had discovered a profound sense of inner peace. Mistakenly assuming that this achievement was permanent and that his mind had been transformed (and laboring under the conviction that absorption was the goal he was aiming for), he was naturally distressed to find this golden state evaporating as soon as conditions changed. He thought his mind would stay quiet forever and assumed he was finally rid of his neurotic tendencies. But his assumptions were unfounded, and his attachment to a particular state of mind was revealed.

In a certain light, realizing his mistake was the real point of this man’s retreat. The desire to conquer impermanence by uniting the self with an idealized and unchanging “other” is very understandable. It manifests in love as well as in religion and is a persistent theme warned about in Buddhist psychology. Concentration meditations, deployed in the extreme, tend to take people away, akin to what happens when one is lost in music or transported during sex. The mind becomes focused, physical sensations are heightened, and feelings of serenity become strong. With diligent one-pointed practice, these feelings of absorption can be extended for prolonged periods of time, giving people the impression that all their problems have disappeared forever. The Buddha himself was careful not to urge his followers too far in this direction, however. Clinging takes many forms, and the desire for inner peace can sometimes be just as neurotic as other, more obvious addictions. The wish to lose oneself, however well-intentioned, masks a mind-set dominated by self-judgment and self-deprecation. It is often just another way of trying to find a safe place to hide, replacing a troubled self with something perfect and unassailable. Right concentration steers in a different direction. It offers stillness, not just as respite, but as a way of entertaining uncertainty. In a world where impermanence and change are basic facts of life, the willingness to be surprised gives one a big advantage.

♦

From Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself, by Mark Epstein. Reprinted with permission of Penguin Press.

Listen to our latest Tricycle Talks podcast with Mark Epstein, “The Task Is Being You.”

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