In her first book, How to Do Nothing, artist Jenny Odell examined the power of quiet contemplation in a world where our attention is bought and sold. Now, she takes up the question of how to find space for silence when we feel like we don’t have enough time to spend.

In her new book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, Odell traces the history behind our relationship to time, from the day-to-day pressures of productivity to the deeper existential dread underlying the climate crisis. In the process, she explores alternative ways of experiencing time that can help us get past the illusion of the separate self and instead open us to wonder and freedom.

In a recent episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg sat down with Odell to discuss the social dimensions of time, how paying attention can unsettle the boundaries between us, why she views burnout as a spiritual issue, and how love can bring us out of linear time. Read an excerpt from their conversation, and then listen to the full episode.

James Shaheen (JS): These days, it can be so easy to fall into apocalyptic thinking and what you call declinism, which you describe as the belief that a once stable society is headed for inevitable and irreversible doom. Can you walk us through some of the dangers of this view?

Jenny Odell (JO): I think declinism can foreclose a really crucial space of questioning or imagination that would allow you to imagine other pathways forward. It may be the case that that space is vanishingly small, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still very important. Rebecca Solnit has written really beautifully about this: what you believe very literally affects what it is possible for you to do. You see this individually in people where what they think they’re capable of doing affects what they’re able to do, but I think it’s also true collectively. So I worry a lot about not only giving up before it’s over but also how the world looks to someone who’s given up. 

Declinism goes hand in hand with the idea that things used to be better—and a lot of things did used to be better. But a blanket notion that things were stable for a long time and now we’re going over the edge is a myopic view in both directions. I’m much more interested in a notion of history where every moment is actually contingent and at every moment things could have gone different ways. If you look at history that way, the present moment appears very different—it looks like it could also go a lot of different ways.

Sharon Salzberg (SS): You also discuss the phenomenon of climate grief, and you suggest that grief can be incredibly useful as it can teach us new forms of subjecthood. Can you say more about the types of subjecthood that grief makes possible?

JO: Climate grief is so much grief for something—or for someone or someones. I think in that acknowledgment is this recognition that you don’t really belong to yourself. In How to Do Nothing, I describe going to Elkhorn Slough and seeing all of these birds. At that moment, there was such a profusion of them and they were so beautiful, but I also couldn’t see them not against the backdrop of loss.

In that moment, I realized that it doesn’t really logically make sense to love anything. From the point of total utilitarian logic, why would you tie your fate to something that is endangered? And yet that is the moment when you experience your deepest sense of humanity. The experience of grief itself is that I care about something so much that it’s disassembling my ego. It’s almost like the center of gravity is between you and the being that you’re grieving for.

JS: Moments like the one you just described seem to unsettle the boundaries between us. So what have these experiences taught you about what you call the illusion of the bounded self?

JO: What the self is is still a very active question for me, and it’s only become more fascinatingly complicated for me through experiences like that. I am someone who has thought a lot about context for a long time. A lot of my art asked the question about how you can separate an individual thing from its context. I was an artist in residence at a dump, and I researched 200 objects, everything I could find about them, and the conclusion that I came to was that this object you’re holding in your hand is the crystallization of economic patterns: people thought they wanted this, or people thought they could get people to want this, or these materials were available and cheap at this time. You have this thing that seems like it’s just given, but actually all of these factors fed into it. So I’ve always been interested in that in all domains.

The same is true for the self. I do feel like I have some sort of core vaguely, but I do also feel like there’s Mountain Jenny, and then there’s Oakland Jenny, and there’s Paralyzed by a Butterfly Jenny, and I’m very different around different people. I think someone could come to the conclusion that there just is no self and it’s all totally meaningless, but I don’t really think that. Instead, I have a very ecological view of the self, like it’s something that’s alive. It’s entirely made out of relationships.

SS: Along those lines, in contrast to the notion of an isolated individual, you write that you’ve come to define being alive as an embrace. What does it mean that being alive is like an embrace?

JO: I think of it as a mix of sensitivity and love. I feel alive to the extent that I can see the birds [around me]—and not just see them but also feel moved by them. I think that is the kind of engine behind wanting to see what the next day brings and also wanting to see how I change in response to those things. My nightmare is feeling like I’m just an isolated unit that’s just incidentally here on earth without having any relationship to anything.

I’m very fortunate to have been able to mostly live in the same place my whole life, and the relationship that I have to this place is so, so meaningful. It’s so much a part of who I am. Someone recently said to me, “I don’t just think that we see places. I think that places see us.” That’s what I mean by the embrace: I want to feel like I’m sensitive to things that are happening around me, but I also want to feel seen—there’s a reciprocal relationship where I’m looking at a world that’s also alive.

SS: You quote the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, who writes that when we are actually seeing, we’re in a state of love and there’s no yesterday and no tomorrow. Can you say more about this state of love?

JO: One of the reasons love feels related to time for me is that there’s nothing instrumental about love, and there’s so much right now that feels instrumental. In How to Do Nothing, I talked about Martin Buber’s idea of I-Thou versus I-It relationships. Having an I-Thou relationship to something is much closer to what I was saying earlier about the center of gravity, and I-It is more like things exist in the world for me to either use them or discard them.

Anyone who’s experienced even one second of love toward anything or anyone knows that the notion of gain or strategy just doesn’t make any sense. It is the ultimate end in and of itself. If you’re there, you just want to be there. I have the linear timeline of my life, but I also know that in these moments that I’ve had where I felt a feeling of love, it felt like time stopped. I don’t really think of myself as having an age in those moments. They’re very strikingly similar, and I suspect they will continue to be similar.

♦

The post There Is No Yesterday and No Tomorrow appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I once fell in love with a person who interrupted our stroll in the middle of a crowded street, took my face in his hands, and told me that he never wanted to spend any time apart from me. We’d been a couple for nearly half a year and had decided to take a day trip to New Haven (where I’d gone to school) to explore the city’s art museums and my old haunts. We walked down Chapel Street on a bright spring day and ducked into a bookstore where we kissed in the nonfiction section and bought cards to write to each other. We caffeinated at a coffee shop where I used to study, and I took him to each dorm where I’d lived. We gazed up at the windows and he kissed my forehead, telling me he wished he’d known me then.

But even during our first week together, amid the fever pitch of our early relationship, a sentence arose, unbidden, in my mind: All things contain the seed of their own destruction. I was startled. The voice was kind, not dire; the words felt more like wisdom than a warning. I paid attention but ultimately dismissed them.

I had heard this lesson, expressed myriad ways, ever since I was a child. My parents, both devout Hindus, taught my brother and me that change is life’s only constant: the sky would always darken after a sunset, green leaves would always burn crimson in the autumn, and our bodies would grow feeble as the years passed. My father still reminds me that suffering ensues when we expect things to be permanent though they are not. 

As a palliative care doctor, I encounter the most marked manifestation of impermanence every day: that of bodily illness and death. There is the young man with end-stage stomach cancer that had shrunk with chemotherapy only to invade his liver and lungs quite suddenly; the older woman with Parkinson’s whose tremors were manageable until one day they grew so severe that she couldn’t walk anymore; the gentleman with heart failure who gasped when he spoke, his breathlessness worsening each day. My patients often share photos of who they used to be, their bodies fuller, their smiles wide. Sometimes memory is their sharpest pain: I felt so good a few months ago when the chemotherapy was still working. Why did it stop working? I’m taking all of my medications, so why is my breathing getting worse? 

Dying is a series of incremental losses: We become newly dependent on others to walk or change our clothes. Our appetites fade. Pain forces us to part ways with activities that once brought us joy. My patients and I often talk about living amid the chilling uncertainty that accompanies illness, and they tell me how they have coped with intense change in the past. Most haven’t deeply considered the philosophy of impermanence, but those who embrace it tell me about the freedom it confers. A body that grows weaker is slightly less shocking. Shifts in relationships are normalized. When receptivity to change supplants resistance, grief can feel like a gentler presence.

Yet everyday life is also a series of losses. And outside the hospital I couldn’t easily translate the philosophy I discussed with my patients into my daily life. My partner and I read each other poetry in each of our native languages and laughed when my dog gave him endless kisses. He didn’t want to disclose our relationship to an ex-girlfriend; I wondered whether I could trust him. We cooked elaborate meals for each other and sent the other home with leftovers. We talked seriously about how we’d combine our families’ traditions on our wedding day and discussed when we might have a child. When we fought about our differing communication styles, I grew distant and unable to express my concern for fear of seeming needy.

What made the relationship real was also what made it unbearable: the constant presence of change. 

While I could accept the idea of impermanence when helping my patients contend with dying and suffering, I couldn’t do the same when living my life.

Much of what I do as a doctor and a writer depends on observation: How do people behave when everything is on the line? What do they do when they think that nobody is looking? Who do they try to be, and why? Both practices demand control, the opposite of surrender. I’d told myself a story about my partner and our relationship, clinging unintentionally to a static image of each. Yet I’d forgotten that every story is ultimately about change. And while I could accept the idea of impermanence when helping my patients contend with dying and suffering, I couldn’t do the same when living my life.

A few months later I flew to New York to attend a friend’s wedding. I sent my partner photos of the newlyweds and the cake; he sent back pictures of himself cuddling my dog. The day I returned, his texts were distant. When he stopped by that night, he gave me a brief hug and spoke to me in a detached voice, as though I were a stranger. 

“I don’t think we should be together anymore,” he said.

I couldn’t find my words. I could barely feel the couch beneath me. I made sure that I was awake, that this was actually happening, that the person who couldn’t meet my eyes was the same person whose voicemail yesterday had said he couldn’t wait to see me. Shock rendered me silent: I couldn’t think to ask what went wrong, or whether he thought our relationship was worth at least a conversation about what happened. And though we agreed to take some time to consider the best path forward, he texted me a few days later, his tone formal, professional. Though he respected and cared for me, ending our relationship was the rational and logical thing to do, he said. I didn’t know what to say. I never wrote him back.

We don’t know when the diagnosis will come. We don’t know when the disease will worsen. We don’t know when love will arrive. We don’t know when it will fade. We can only know that the unexpected will happen, that certainty is a falsity, and that things will be impermanent regardless of how tightly we clench our fists around them. We mourn the brief lives of solitary moments, hoping that running reels through our minds might resuscitate them. And no matter how often my own life has shown me this truth, I relearn it in new ways each time loss arrives.

The loss of a relationship is not the same as the loss of a life. Suffering a sudden betrayal is not the same as dying from heart failure. Yet both can teach us how to cultivate a new relationship to surrender and acceptance. This doesn’t require forgetting or denying the past. It requires only that we examine it like a series of photographic stills, impressions we can retain and learn from with compassion instead of judgment.

In the days after our conversation, I lost my appetite and lay awake at night alternately crying and devoid of emotion. As I drove to work each morning, I tried to corral my emotions by remembering what I knew intellectually but couldn’t yet feel: Surrender is the path to salvation. Experiencing equanimity requires welcoming change. Embracing the ubiquity of transformation can offer transcendence. Yet I still searched for the reasons why the relationship had ended so abruptly, though this effort was nothing more than submission to an undertow: I found myself floundering in the depths, the search for an anchor perpetually elusive.

Not long thereafter, I sat with an elderly woman who hadn’t seen a doctor for fifty years. She felt her back snap one afternoon while gardening. Lung cancer had spread to her spine. She was too frail for chemotherapy. “I was fine until I suddenly wasn’t,” she said, looking out of the window at the gray sky that blanketed the city. I thought of Joan Didion’s famous lines: “Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” 

As I left her room, I realized that in between the moment he’d left me a longing voicemail and the moment he knocked on my door, the only certainty was change. The way I’d felt in our first month together could never last, because it was the way we felt together in that first month. The second month existed only because the first had passed. And as time marched on, so did every sweet and hard moment of our relationship. The times when we saw in each other an unvarnished goodness coexisted with the times when the pain between us made it hard to look at one another. 

All things contain the seed of their own destruction—including the confusion and shock I initially felt. For even finitude offers gifts: though we will lose the things we can’t release, we will also lose the things we can’t wait to let go of. As I loosened my grip on the relationship I’d lost, as accepting its mystery became more important than understanding its demise, I began to feel how surrender begets both freedom and forgiveness. 

He would always be the person who bought me a beautiful card he’d never write, the one who said he’d never told anyone besides me about his depression, the one who accused me of holding him at a distance when I didn’t share my every feeling, the one whose mother had never met any of his other girlfriends, the one who gave me books I still reread, the one I’d see around afterward, both of us knowing I’d chosen to say nothing about something that had once meant everything. 

In the months that followed, when I thought of him, new lines came to mind, these from Mary Oliver: 

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. 

The post A Gift appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When someone asked the Buddha what the essence of his teachings were, he responded that he only ever taught about suffering and the end of suffering. Summarized as the four noble truths, his teachings say that we create our own distress because of our endless wants. But we can just as well choose not to create that suffering by following the noble eightfold path, which includes eight areas of study and practice that cover all aspects of our lives. They are: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Here, “right” doesn’t oppose wrong in a moral sense but refers to what is right or correct or proper (Pali: samma) to ensure the end of our suffering.

Both the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path are familiar to anyone who’s spent even a short period of time studying Buddhism. But there’s another thread that runs through all four truths and, particularly, the eight factors of the path. It’s what we could call the ninth implicit factor: right relationship.

All of us are in constant relationship with others: our parents, children, lovers, friends, coworkers. Even when we’re alone, we’re in relationship with ourselves, with beings more than human, with objects of all kinds, and with the Earth, and depending on our level of awareness, we’ll relate with more or less skill, either birthing or ending suffering. Practicing right relationship can help us increase both our skill and awareness so that we can establish loving, fulfilling relationships based on kindness, clarity, and care. 

We can define right relationship as the recognition of our interdependence or, as Thich Nhat Hanh called it, our “interbeing.” If we look closely at our lives, we’ll recognize that none of us can be ourselves by ourselves. None of us are—we, by necessity, inter-are. Every aspect of who I am—my hair color, the shape of my eyes, my love of chocolate chip cookies, my dislike of coconut, my interest in Buddhism, my passion for words, my dislike of crowds—every little detail that makes up who I am has been shaped by something or someone in my life, and it’s still being shaped, constantly. I am a continuous process of becoming, and so are you as well as everything around us. No one thing or being exists in isolation, just as no action stands on its own. The question isn’t whether we affect one another—we do. The question is how.

If we start with the premise that all eight factors of the path occur within relationship, then we can investigate how right relationship operates within each one. Applying the lens of right relationship can inform and enrich our practice of the other eight factors, beginning with right view, which the Buddha called “the precursor of the path.”

The traditional definition of right view is knowledge of the four noble truths, which helps us to first identify the problem of suffering, and second, to apply a solution. More broadly, we can think of right view as correct seeing—that is, seeing things as they are, not as we are. 

Some time ago, a good friend was fired from her job at a special events company after she made a mistake in one of her projects. She’d been scheduled to run the operations for a big conference in another country months after the time she was fired. Her partner had also signed up for this event. When she was let go, my friend was told someone else would be running the event, and for reasons relating to the company’s policies, that she wouldn’t be able to attend that event even as a participant. She’d worked for this company for more than ten years and had become close with both her coworkers and her clients, so she was very upset by the sudden loss of work she loved, as well as the potential severing of professional relationships. The decision seemed extreme and unfair to her, and she was so unsettled that she didn’t know how to move forward. 

Her friends rallied around her, assuring her that they too found the company’s response overly harsh. This helped to soften the blow a little, as did her spontaneous decision to book a vacation with her partner. Instead of staying home moping about the conference she’d miss, she and her partner could spend some time together, and she could use those few days to process and consider her next steps. Except her partner didn’t respond the way she expected. He was a bit aloof when she voiced her distress about losing her work and community, and after a few days’ reflection, let her know that he would still attend the conference. When my friend asked why, all he said was, “I planned on it.” Not understanding why he’d put his plans before hers, my friend was doubly upset. She felt unseen and unsupported—as if they were no longer in a relationship, she said—which made her feel yet another loss.

When she told me the story, it occurred to me that they were both having a hard time understanding one another, and more importantly, feeling what the other felt. Instead of seeing the situation in its entirety and with all its complexity, they were each seeing it through the filter of their own view. But if they could apply right relationship to right view, would they see the situation differently?

Let’s say that instead of proceeding from what he knew or thought he knew, my friend’s partner approached the situation with a question—something along the lines of: “it seems that it’s important to you that I cancel the conference; can you tell me more about why that is so I can better understand you?” A question like this would create an opening. It would immediately foreground their connection to one another and allow my friend to state her view. It would also make her feel that her partner was interested in her experience, that he was seeing her. He could then apply the same attitude of curiosity to his own view to tell her why it was important for him to honor his original commitment. Perhaps, to show his support in some other way, he could suggest that she go on vacation with a close friend—and maybe even offer to pay for it. Or maybe, after listening to her, he’d decide that it was more important to help her get through this challenging time and attend a similar conference in the future. 

For her part, my friend could create space between her partner’s response and her hurt by asking why he thought it was important to attend the conference instead of accompanying her at a time when she felt alone and discouraged. Doing so after stating her needs would help her better understand his motivation (beyond his first superficial and perhaps defensive response). She could then decide perhaps that his answer had nothing to do with her but with his prior commitment, and instead plan their vacation to start after his return. 

So much of our conflict comes from our misunderstandings or assumptions. Like the blind men in the famous parable of the blind men and the elephant, we assume we know based on a limited amount of information. A king brings an elephant before six blind men and asks them to describe the animal after touching only one part of its body. One of the men feels its head and concludes that an elephant is like a jar. Another touches its ear and says it’s unequivocally like a winnowing basket. A third runs his hand over its tusk and says it’s like a plowshare, and so on. Having a limited view, the blind men come to the wrong conclusion, confusing a slice of reality for the whole.

Right relationship applied to right view would remind my friend and her partner that there are two people involved in the situation, each with slightly or very different views, and that they affect one another. By taking right relationship as the basis for their dialogue, they might feel more connected, more in tune with their own and the other’s wishes, and more respectful of them. Through this process, they can then make their choices from within their relationship—even if in the end they agree to disagree.

The Buddha said that right view is like sugarcane, a grape seed, or a grain of rice that, when planted in moist soil, grows sweet and delightful, agreeable and pleasing. Right relationship is that moist soil from which right view draws its sustenance. It’s the rich ground that nurtures our view of things as they are so we can enjoy the fruits of our actions and our connections to one another, both in this moment and for many years to come.

♦

Excerpted from a book in progress called LOVE: The Practice of Right Relationship.

The post Right Relationship: The Ninth Factor of the Path appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“What’s the best way to work with difficult people?” 

This is one of the most common questions I hear while leading mindful leadership trainings inside of companies or during public leadership workshops. Whenever I’m asked this question, I become curious. Very curious.

I like to make eye contact with the person asking the question to try to see if the person is aware that they, too, are at times one of those “difficult people.” The question itself can be a subtle form of taking on the role of a victim, since it implies that the person might be blind to how they themselves can be negatively perceived by others. By labeling certain people or behaviors as “difficult,” the question is making a judgment, and it echoes our “inner Homer” tendency to not want to be held accountable for our own role in “difficult” relationships.

Sometimes I even ask the person directly, “Are you, at times, one of those difficult people?”

An important and fundamental distinction to make is between “difficult people” and behaviors or actions that we find difficult. This particular pattern, of labeling difficult behavior as a kind of “character flaw,” is so pervasive that it has a name: attribution error. This refers to how, when someone does something that hurts or angers us, we tend to judge that person’s entire character. They become, in our minds, that label. And once we label them a “difficult person,” all their actions fit under that umbrella. I suppose, from an evolutionary perspective, this is an effective process of protecting ourselves and defending our tribe from those “others” who pose a threat—that is, those with specific unwanted “character flaws.”

An important and fundamental distinction to make is between “difficult people” and behaviors or actions that we find difficult.

A strange and rather pervasive human behavior pattern is that we tend to judge others by the impact their actions have on us. We judge ourselves by our intentions. 

This process—from feeling the impact of another person’s behavior on us to drawing conclusions and assigning labels—happens quickly, often outside our conscious thinking or choice. Not only does it apply to individuals, attribution error can quickly and easily expand to much larger groups. Within companies, sales groups can form judgments about the operations team; customer service groups can judge marketing teams. Staff employees can judge leadership teams, and leaders can judge staff. In our wider world, we label someone who changes lanes without signaling a “bad driver,” someone who arrives late to the office a “lazy employee,” someone who cuts in line at the store a “rude person,” and so on.

For a variety of reasons, people can label whole categories of “others” —white people and Black people, Democrats and Republicans, Jews and Muslims—as angry, ungrateful, stupid, untrustworthy, dangerous, and on and on, all based on profoundly powerful attribution errors.

Often the process begins with an underlying belief or judgment that we’ve heard from those we work with or grew up with. At times it begins with feeling hurt, uneasy, or threatened—a simple “ouch.” Someone says something or does something and we respond by feeling hurt, angry, put down, or not seen. This reaction can arise with how someone looks at us.

The practice of finding more clarity within ourselves and employing compassionate accountability begins with becoming more curious about these reactions and why they have arisen. Skillfully engaging in the practice “be curious, not furious” means to feel and act with a sense of greater safety, instead of scanning for threats. It means to feel more satisfied instead of focusing on what is lacking or needed. It means to feel and act with a greater sense of connection, not disconnection. It also means developing effective strategies for working more skillfully with strong emotions.

♦ 

Excerpted from the book Finding Clarity: How Compassionate Accountability Builds Vibrant Relationships, Thriving Workplaces, and Meaningful Lives ©2023 by Marc Lesser. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.

The post How to Deal with Difficult People appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Martine Batchelor: When we look at relationships, one question that often comes up is: What about practice and sexuality? Often there is talk about desire as something negative. But you also have the desire, of course, for awakening. 

As human beings, one can have sexuality and intimacy with oneself. But here, we’re talking about sexuality in terms of relationships with others. Whenever the Buddha talked about sexuality, he generally only discussed sexual misconduct. Outside of that, he did not say, “Do this or that to benefit sexuality or intimacy.” So we have to be careful if we think we’ll find all this in the text in terms of sexuality and relationship. We also need to consider modernity, the cultural mood, ways of intimacy, and sexual exploration. Sexuality is such a broad topic, so of course, we cannot cover every aspect of it.

Laura Bridgman: When you mentioned how the relationship to sexuality is depicted in the scriptures, I remember when I came across those teachings and read those teachings, I just didn’t find them that helpful. It felt like they were almost developing aversion, actually. So instead I thought about what would actually help me in this area of my life, and I realized it was incorporating the Buddha’s teaching on desire. It’s so easy to feel like desire is something we have to get rid of. But it’s so much more. It’s about how we develop our relationship with desire. 

Sexual energy is pretty much the strongest desire we experience in our lives. Interestingly, one question that arises is whether sexuality is fundamental to survival, individually. It’s possible to be celibate, to live a life without being sexually active. In my life, I’ve moved through different phases of celibacy and being sexually active, and I’ve found it incredibly helpful to apply the basic principles and teachings around desire. Such as how to be present with craving and what fuels craving. A lot of sexuality is about what we project in terms of fantasy, and then seeing if it is possible to witness those projections in awareness and what happens when we do. 

Martine Batchelor: Yes, and at the same time, I think we have to be careful of only looking at sexuality in terms of sexual energy because not everybody has that. There are people who say, “Well, I don’t feel like having sex at all. I want to be able to love somebody, to be intimate with somebody, but I have no sexual desire.” So I think we have to be a little careful saying it is the strongest force in the universe. For some people, maybe. But what if you have none? Like you see somebody and you cannot experience them in that way. 

We have to also put sexuality in terms of the dharma of relationships. Of course, you can have different types of sexuality and you can do different things, as long as it’s harmless, but what about in terms of relationships? Here we’re talking about in terms of being a partner, of being quite close with somebody. We are really talking about love and how we love each other with our mind, heart, and body. We are talking about how sexuality can enhance being together, feeling strongly together, and bringing pleasure to each other. 

One thing to be careful of is that if we have a very intense experience, we might become self-centered. “This is for me.” This is one of my experiences with sex—the feeling was so strong that I then thought to myself, “Wow, this is so pleasant!” And the other person disappeared in that ecstatic feeling. Experiencing that ecstatic feeling is fine, but can you remember the other? When we share intimacy, when we share the body, we have to be careful with how we treat the other person. That is so important. 

We also have to be careful of what I would call the tropes—the idea that if somebody does not want to have sex with me, it means they don’t love me anymore. In reality, there are so many different circumstances. They might be tired, they might be ill, who knows, lots of things can happen. So we have to be careful of the perception we bring to the relationship and to sexuality itself.

Laura Bridgman: As you’re talking, I’m reminded of another aspect of sexuality, which is the element of vulnerability. That quality of intimacy brings vulnerability. How are we with our vulnerability with another? What are our needs there? The practice of presence supports this sensitivity to these different areas we’ve been touching on, and it can really support the fullness and the delicacy of connection in sexually relating.

The post Sexuality, Desire, and the Dharma of Relationships appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Martine Batchelor: Something that is important to explore, look at, and be careful with in terms of the dharma of relationships is ending a relationship intentionally. In the dharma, we talk a lot about patience, generosity, compassion, and forgiveness. But, as the Buddha says, we need to have as much compassion for ourselves as for others. So in a relationship, we need to care for and protect ourselves. 

Long ago, I was teaching about compassion, and this young woman came to me and said, “I’m not sure if I am compassionate enough.” She explained that she had a husband who was a drug addict, which was not really the problem, but his dealer was coming to threaten the family. After three years of this, she finally left him. When she asked me, “Do you think I was compassionate enough?” I nearly said, “You were too compassionate.” I told her, “You were really compassionate enough, and it was a good idea to leave him for your own safety.” 

We’ve talked about the parami of courage, the parami of courage of saying no, the parami of courage of saying “Yes, I love you, but from afar.” If we are harmed in a relationship, then we have to save ourselves. We have to be able to end a relationship knowing that life is complex, life is rich, and it does not depend on having that harmful person in my life. There are other people out there who will be supportive and beneficial to me. We have to have the courage to protect ourselves, to take care of ourselves in relationships.

Laura Bridgman: That’s true. And even if a relationship or situation isn’t overtly harmful, it could be that the relationship isn’t really serving our growth and development, whether that’s in our life or our practice. That can be a more subtle, nuanced sense that I need to separate, I need to go in another direction here. I found it helpful to discern what’s driving my desire to move away or to stay. I liked what you were saying about the parami, for instance. We may sometimes feel that we should be generous or compassionate. We may assume that compassion or generosity is one thing, and saying no and having a boundary is another. They can actually go together. There can be a compassionate way of saying no. Saying no can actually be a generous gesture in the sense of not continuing with an unworkable relationship or situation. 

When we look at our relationship with these qualities, we don’t need to take a fixed position on them. “I should be compassionate, I should be open,” I don’t think that’s what the Buddha meant. It’s more like a process of balance. If my heart is closed, how come? What’s keeping it closed? That’s a generous attitude. And if my heart is stuck open and I’m not able to hold my boundaries, what do I need here? What would support me to feel where my line is in this relationship?

Martine Batchelor: I have observed that when a relationship is very good, you don’t question it. If the relationship is very bad, then hopefully, you get out of it. But the most difficult thing about ending a relationship is when you are in the middle: one day is good, I stay; one day is bad, I go. Up and down. That is a difficult place to be, and so one needs to bring wisdom and protection to that. 

There was another story that struck me. I once had a lady come and again ask, “Am I compassionate enough?” She explains, “We have many children in this family, but I am the only one who still sees my father. But I only see him once a year.” Your first reaction may be, “Wait a minute, once a year? That’s not very compassionate.” But she was the only one who was able to even do that. And why? Because what he wanted once a year, at least, was to be taken to a restaurant and he would be so cantankerous, shouting at everybody. The experience was a disaster. That’s why nobody else wanted to meet him. I told her, “That’s very courageous of you and compassionate to do it once a year. Because that’s what you’re able to do. But you cannot do more. And that’s wisdom: to know what my limits are in that situation.”

Laura Bridgman: This makes me think of practicing with doubt. For instance: Should I stay? Should I go? We get pulled between these different viewpoints of all the things that justify staying and all the things that justify going. We get caught up in the swing back and forth between the two, which can make us feel helpless and caught in doubt. We think, I want to have a clearer sense of what’s needed, but I’m not clear. So I get pulled back and forth. We can be so driven to be absolutely sure and get it right, to make the right decision. We may choose one way and then really regret it and punish ourselves for getting it wrong. It can be compassionate to recognize how much pressure we put on ourselves to find our direction in a relationship. I’ve found that when I actually take that pressure off, that supports a bit more clarity and wisdom in discerning what’s needed. 

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As a psychiatrist and Zen priest, Robert Waldinger has devoted much of his professional career to the question of what makes a good life. He currently serves as director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is the longest scientific study of happiness. The study has tracked the lives of participants for over seventy-five years, tracing how childhood experiences and relationships affect health and well-being later in life. In his new book, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, Waldinger shares what he’s learned from directing the study.

In a recent episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sat down with Waldinger to discuss what makes a good life, the common regrets that people have toward the end of their lives, and how his Zen practice informs his work as a psychiatrist. Read an excerpt from their conversation below, and then listen to the full episode.

James Shaheen: A recurring question in the book is: What makes a good life? What has the data shown you in this regard?

Robert Waldinger: To put it in Buddhist terms, a good life is made with sangha. When we studied people throughout their lives, if we wanted to predict who was going to stay healthy and be happier and live longer, we found two key predictors. One, of course, was taking care of your health, and that was not a surprise. But the surprise was that the people who stayed healthier and were happier were the people who had better, warmer connections with other people. Good relationships really predicted well-being over time.

At first, we didn’t believe our own data: How could good relationships help prevent coronary artery disease or make it less likely that you were going to get rheumatoid arthritis? And so we’ve spent the last ten years studying the mechanisms by which our relationships actually get inside our bodies and shape our health. It’s hard to determine for any one person exactly what caused what, but when we look at thousands of lives, as we’ve done, then we can say there are these predictors, and a lot of the predictors stem from relationships and community. There was a developmental researcher, Michael Rutter, who once said that all the data show that what every child needs to grow up healthy is one consistent, caring adult who’s crazy about them. If you have that, you’ve got a huge leg up on a good life.

What are some of the factors that make a relationship successful? What we’ve seen is that it’s important to be able to feel like yourself in a relationship—to feel like you don’t have to stifle, suppress, or hide away parts of yourself. People tend to identify the relationships where they feel like they can be authentic as the most important and most impactful in their lives. That doesn’t mean things have to be smooth all the time. In fact, you can still have a very argumentative relationship with somebody where you feel you can be yourself and that you’re fundamentally respected.

“A good life is made with sangha.”

It’s also important to have people who will be there for you no matter what. We asked our original participants, “List all the people who you could call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared.” Some people could list several people. Some of our participants couldn’t list anybody. We think that having at least one relationship, one person to whom you feel securely attached and securely connected, is an essential component of what keeps us healthy.

In the book, you mention three important factors in maintaining mutually fulfilling relationships: curiosity, generosity, and what you call learning new dance steps. Can you walk us through each of these factors? Curiosity is the act of bringing what we call in Zen beginner’s mind, putting aside all your preconceptions and bringing a curiosity even to the person you feel you know everything about. This can be very useful, especially if you’re going to a family gathering where you know everyone and you know which jokes they’re going to tell. One of my meditation teachers gave me the instruction once to ask myself, “What’s here that I have never noticed before?” I find that extremely useful when I am coming into relationship with somebody who I feel like I’ve known for a long time or I know so much about. You can also bring this sense of curiosity to meeting someone you don’t know by asking them questions, which communicates to them, “I recognize you, I’m interested in you.” You will be amazed at how people will light up in response to that kind of curiosity.

Then there’s generosity. One of the things that meditation practice shows us is our judging minds. One exercise that I love that’s really painful for me is counting how many judgments you make in ten minutes of meditation. I lose count. My mind is filled with judgments all the time. Our minds are going to judge. That’s part of what the human mind does. But we can hold those judgments lightly. We can set them aside and just be with the person in front of us. Of course, there’s also generosity of our resources, time, attention, money, and physical help. All of those are relationship builders.

Then there’s learning new dance steps. I started thinking of it this way when my wife and I took a beginners’ dance class. A lot of the people in the dance class were learning to dance because they wanted to be able to dance at their weddings. We could see that some couples would learn new dance steps together, and they could really move and adjust to each other. And some couples just had a terrible time. What I began to understand is that we’re always having to adapt to each other in relationships. We’re always having to learn new things. My wife and I have been married for thirty-six years. We thought we were signing up for particular people when we committed to each other, and then she and I have both grown and changed a lot. The question is: Can we change in such a way that we adapt to each other? That’s what I mean by learning new dance steps. We thought we knew how to dance well together when we first got together, but our dance moves have changed with each other. Can those dance moves be somewhat harmonious even as we’re both developing into different people? That doesn’t just happen in intimate partnerships. It happens in long friendships. Lord knows it happens in family relationships. You need to allow each other room to have grown out of old patterns.

You also draw from the work of Erik and Joan Erikson in laying out the stages of life. Can you walk us through the stages of what you call a lifetime of adult relationships? How do our relational needs shift as we get older? Erik Erikson and Joan Erikson were wonderful thinkers about adult life. I used to think that when I got to my 20s, I was done. If I was lucky, I’d find a partner, I’d find a profession, and I would just live out the rest of my life. There wouldn’t be much development or much growth. The Eriksons were the first to say that there’s a whole path of development in adult life. Erikson’s idea was that young adulthood is a challenge of achieving intimacy versus isolation. The big question is: Can I find someone to love? Can I find someone to love me? Or am I going to be alone? Many of us do work out that challenge in young adulthood. Some people work it out in their 70s. Stages are helpful frameworks, but we don’t all fit into them perfectly.

Then there is a stage in middle age of generativity versus stagnation. Generativity is the Eriksonian term for fostering the welfare of the next generation. What Erikson said was that we all get to a point in our adult development where we really want to further the lives of those who come next. It could be raising children. It could be mentoring people in our work lives. It could be mentoring younger people in a hobby or in a volunteer activity. It’s a concern beyond the self. And I think we know from Buddhist teachings that when we move beyond the small self, the “I, me, mine” self, we grow, and we thrive. It’s a very important contributor to well-being.

And then old age, Erikson said, was the challenge of integrity versus despair. Integrity is the ability to look back on your life and say, “This was a good enough life. I’ve had a decent run of things” as opposed to despair, or the sense that you’ve wasted your life. Sometimes when we talk about paying attention in meditation practice, we say: don’t miss your life. Don’t be so lost in your head that life goes by and you’re not even here for it, you’re not present. What Erikson said was, we all want to be able to look back and say not that I had a perfect life, but that it was OK. It was good enough.

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As I go about my day, while out and about, I often offer metta phrases like, “May you be happy and peaceful. May you be safe and protected. May you live with ease and well-being.” Of course you can find your own phrases, but there are also classical phrases to use, and those phrases came to me twenty-plus years ago. For me, they’re comfortable, rhythmic, and have meaning. I can put intention behind them. I offer these phrases to whatever beings I cross paths with, and it’s been quite a transformative practice in that I’ve been able to cut through quite a bit of the projections and stories that the mind is holding with beings whose stories I don’t actually know.

For a few years, one of my favorite practices has been to practice while I was sitting in the back of an Uber or Lyft. My work had me traveling to different parts of the city and different parts of the county. I had sold my car, and I was walking, riding a bike, using public transportation, or, oftentimes, using an Uber or Lyft. I began to offer metta to those that were driving me to these places. What I noticed is that if I wasn’t actually staring at my phone, doomscrolling, and I was actually connected to the phrases, I could drop under the meaning of the words and into the intentions, and see the person that was actually there. Then I actually began to connect with that person as I was offering these metta phrases.

This led to conversations with strangers from Afghanistan, Poland, Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Somalia, Colombia, and many different Buddhist Asian countries. With those folks, I would notice a Buddhist statue or some other iconography or symbol of the dharma as I was saying the phrases. Sometimes I would ask about it, and they would tell me their name, tell me about this or that, and ask me about my curiosity about the practice. This often led to further conversation. Sometimes it led to coffee, tea, or lunch. It led to a few of the people becoming acquaintances, and it led to a couple of them actually becoming dear friends. I credit all of this to the presence of metta, clear intention, and the mind settling down while I was focused—while my intention and attention was on the person, the being, that was in front of me, and not on my distracted or rushing mind waiting to get somewhere. No scrolling around on my phone.

It was all quite a radical departure from quietly sitting in the back of the car, not connecting and not engaging another being. It was also a radical departure from letting the mind run wild with projections while walking around the city, fearful and anxious, with these other hundreds of thousands of strangers around me.

For me, what I call stealth metta truly presents us with this opportunity to plant the seeds of goodwill, lovingkindness, and friendliness that naturally grow and bloom into strong threads, or strong bonds, between our dharma practice and social transformation. And it colors how we engage in the world.

May you be happy. May you be peaceful. May you be safe and protected. May you live with ease and well-being. And may we all awaken and be free.

♦

Excerpted from Devin Berry’s Dharma Talk, “Metta and Karuna: Two Heart Practices to Cultivate in Meditation and in Daily Life.” Watch the full talk here.

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“You’re a total slacker,” she shouted. “No one can ever please you,” he retorted. “Get your act together,” she continued. “You’re so bossy,” he replied.

In the 1960s as a young counselor I led encounter groups. Many of us were looking for practices to help us speak our minds more freely. In some ways, such free expression proved satisfying. Yet I began to notice that once the initial rush of emotional expression subsided, many group participants still raged at others for presumed slights, projected ill will, and other dissatisfactions. Rather than finding the healing they were looking for, some felt hurt and vulnerable. Even though they were learning to express themselves, something seemed off. Since then, I have discovered other approaches to effective and kind communication through adapting the teachings of Buddhism and systems theory.

In the early ’70s, I spent a year in India immersed in the practice of Buddhist meditation. After I returned to California, my approach to counseling no longer sufficiently fit with the insights I had experienced in India. I started to question some of the assumptions and beliefs I had been bringing to my work. For instance, earlier, when I was unhappy, I assumed either that I was doing something wrong or that something outside of me was wrong. Knowledge of the First Noble Truth—the fact of suffering in life—opened my eyes to the inevitability and impersonality of suffering. I came to see that everyone at times will find life unsatisfactory, so feeling unhappy no longer seemed as personal. Eagerly looking for ways to infuse my work with a Buddhist perspective, I examined teachings on conditioning, causality, mindful discernment, and interdependence.

Today, my work as a marriage and family therapist and communication trainer is profoundly informed by Buddhist teachings as well as a contemporary interpretation of teachings on right speech—communication that is respectful, accurate, and non-harming. Cultivating right speech is similar to cultivating helpful mind-states. Both lead to increased harmony and peace. As we develop more awareness of our habits of speech, we step back and become more discerning about which thoughts and feelings to express (lovingkindness, compassion, etc.) and which to simply notice and let go (hatred, stereotyping, etc.). We can become more skillful about what to say and what not to say to promote harmony.

Right speech is challenging for most people. Habitual beliefs and actions often override intentions for kind communication. People who grew up in families that openly expressed contempt and blame often find those same patterns of speech erupting from their mouths when they’re upset. For example, I worked with a couple who tended to speak to each other with contempt when they were upset, using the same disdainful language that their own parents had used with them. (This style of communication, not surprisingly, correlates with shorter marriages.) By contrast, people raised in families with more skillful communication habits usually have more viable options for handling difficult conversations.

Reflecting on my 1960s encounter groups, I now see that many participants came from families in which they didn’t feel able to express themselves; they enjoyed the “let it all hang out” culture in the groups, speaking their minds without considering the consequences. By inviting participants to speak so freely, group leaders were unwittingly encouraging them to reinforce habitual patterns rather than helping them cultivate expression that encourages equanimity.

Gradually, as I apply the teachings of Buddhism to my work, I see how people can learn to communicate in ways that are more consonant with the inner peace they yearn for. Their use of language can invite right speech or strife. Here’s one example: Sybil says to Richard that she thinks he’s not respecting her when he shows up late for their dates. She then checks out his side of the story, practicing mindful discernment by recognizing that she doesn’t really know what Richard’s lateness means. Before, she would have characterized Richard as a “disrespectful person”—accusing him and provoking his defensiveness. Now, without using disrespectful words, she can ask him for more information.

Responding to Sybil’s skillful speech, Richard is able to listen carefully and reply honestly and kindly. Without defensiveness, he explains that he is often late for appointments and has a general problem being on time. Still, he respects and cares about her. Hearing this, Sybil feels less reactive than she had initially. She understands that his lateness isn’t personal, even though it still frustrates her. The two want to work this out, and by maintaining equanimity and hearing each other’s messages, they both feel optimistic about finding a solution.

Many people forget that they and their loved ones are together on Earth for a short time. Remembering the fact of impermanence adds perspective.

Like meditation, skillful listening—being present to each other’s thoughts and feelings without evaluation—helps open up a dialogue even when people have considerable differences. Mindful listening can nurture a safe place for differences to arise and for people to mutually learn what they can and then move on. When a couple like Sybil and Richard argue, and yet listen to each other’s viewpoints, new insights can arise between them, leading to more clarifying conversations. Likewise, skillful talking encourages skillful listening.

Sadly, knowing about right speech is different from being able to implement it. The way we treat others can be deeply ingrained. For instance, when people hear a different point of view, they often automatically agree, disagree, judge, or evaluate. Knowing how to listen and talk skillfully often requires practicing new behaviors that take time to learn. If the listener practices putting her own thoughts and feelings aside and makes a space for just listening, then understanding becomes more likely. I’ve found that as people practice new communication styles, especially mindful listening and non-blaming speech, their sense of who they are and what’s possible can profoundly shift.

Another practice I’ve incorporated into my work is recognizing positive intentions. I’ve noticed that when couples acknowledge their mutual positive intentions, they’re less likely to vent emotions, encounter group–style, without considering the consequences. As psychologist Daniel Goleman points out in Emotional Intelligence, when people are angry, their reasoning diminishes. By keeping emotions at a lower level, even someone who is upset can anticipate the effect her words might have on her partner.

Focusing on the insight of impermanence is another practice that enhances our relationships. Many people forget that they and their loved ones are together on Earth for a short time. Remembering the fact of impermanence adds perspective. Sometimes we lose some of the pleasure of connection when we focus excessively on changing someone else’s behavior to satisfy our own desires. Often, others won’t or can’t change. That’s when the advice of the third Zen patriarch can help:

“Life is easy for those who are not attached to their preferences.”

For example, if I get upset when my brother doesn’t call me as often as I’d like and then badger him to call, he might feel less inclined to do so. When we talk, in that moment, I’m probably thinking that he’s making me feel bad. I’m forgetting that life is short. I don’t know how many conversations we have left. I may not be able to influence him to call me more often. If I want to enjoy him more fully, I’ll cultivate appreciation for whatever we can share together right now.

***

My approach to communication has also been influenced by systems theory, which overlaps Buddhist teachings in the domain of interdependence. Systems theory explores how parts of a system (individuals, spouses, various species) interact to organize the whole system (a family, a couple, an ecosystem). When we communicate, we form a living system. The parts of our system mutually affect each other—a classic dharmic example of interdependence.

Each part of a system is contingent upon all other parts, with things changing in ways we can’t necessarily predict or control, and at the same time, everything in a system is dynamically in balance with everything else. The importance of this interdependence and the ways we constantly affect each other often go unrecognized by members of a relationship system. But when we do reflect on our interdependence, this can lead to changes—like explicitly expressing more frequent and sincere appreciation—that ripple throughout the system, enhancing goodwill and cooperation. On the other hand, some research suggests that when someone is angry and delivers a nasty message—name-calling, putdowns, etc.—this can undo the goodwill that had been generated by approximately twenty previous acts of kindness. Unfortunately, the cleanup work needed to counter a single nasty message as it echoes throughout the system can be daunting.

Both Buddhism and systems theory present causality as more than the view that one event directly causes another. I first realized the slipperiness of causal interpretations when I taught undergraduate family studies courses at the University of Minnesota. When given an assignment to write about their family-of-origin experiences, my students ascribed seemingly opposite “causes” to the same outcome. Some attributed their need for a lot of physical affection from their partners to the fact that their parents were unaffectionate with each other and with their children, while others attributed their need for affection to the fact that their parents were extremely affectionate. Seemingly opposite situations were cited as causing the same outcome. I found the causal reasoning confusing.

Understanding relationships through systems theory counters the tendency to blame. We forget that many causes and conditions contribute to how we feel. Each effect follows many previous effects. It is highly unlikely that I can isolate a single variable, such as what you said last night, and label that as the cause for my reaction today. Yet people still use phrases like “you made me feel insecure,” implying that a single cause—your criticism—created my reaction. The way people respond depends on many factors, from last night’s sleep to this morning’s headlines.

Insights into causality and blame from both Buddhism and systems theory can help people realize that they are not simply victims and that they can look to themselves to improve their mind-states and situations. When people make the assumption that their feelings are controlled by what others say to them, this engenders a sense of powerlessness. In addition, thinking others can control us leads to the belief that others must change in order for us to feel better. If, on the other hand, we understand that many factors influence behavior, blame becomes a less accurate way to describe experience. Using mindful discernment to consider the influence of other causes and conditions can lead to greater awareness, more options for change, and the insight that there may be some actions we ourselves can take to improve the situation.

Finally, the application of systems theory to the practice of communication encourages a dynamic balance between stability and change. If people can’t adequately express their differing perspectives, they sometimes find that their relationship is too static and they might feel bored. This dynamic often arises in families that avoid conflict at all costs; certain viewpoints may seem too dangerous to express, such as acknowledging Dad’s history of alcoholism. Members of such a family may not realize that perspectives that trigger controversy are a natural and potentially helpful part of life. Differences are bound to occur and can stimulate difficult yet invigorating conversations.

On the other hand, if the expression of differences becomes too extreme (as witnessed in encounter groups), chaos may ensue. When people feel overwhelmed and are unable to hear each other’s viewpoints, their differences can escalate, leading to polarization and vulnerability within their system. The key is in the balance—or the “Middle Way”—to mindfully express differences so that they are perceived as workable. Skillfully working with conflict often strengthens a family or other human system. A communication style infused with Buddhist principles and systems theory can encourage compassionate right speech, resulting in enhanced harmony and stability.

 ⧫

From the Fall 2009 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 26, No. 1) © 2009 Mudita Nisker

Related Inquiring Mind articles:

• “Seeing Clearly?“
• “Reunion on the Path of No Speech“
• “Interview with Marshall Rosenberg: The Traveling Peacemaker“

The post What Do You Say?  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

“We create the world with our minds.” I’ve been hearing some version of this teaching for the last thirty years, ever since I started studying Zen. The actual saying is “the three worlds (of form, formlessness, and desire) are nothing but mind,” but “the three worlds” is simply another way of saying “everything.” We create all of reality through the way we use—or misuse—our minds, which in turn extends to the way we think, speak, and act. Each of these three fields of activity constitutes a world in itself, but here I’ll just focus on speech, partly because of my own love of words, and partly because of a recent conversation that made me reflect on the nature of language and its shape shifting, shape molding qualities. In this way, language also creates worlds, and as practitioners we do well to pay close attention to the ways that our words shape our experience. 

Take, for example, the concept of “indexicals,” linguistic expressions that reference different objects depending on the context in which they occur. The words I or today are indexical because when I use the pronoun I, I’m referring to myself: Zuisei, or Vanessa. When you use the pronoun, you’re referring to you: Rosa, or Charlie, or Hiram, or the eight billion other Is that inhabit our planet. Likewise, when I use the word today today, I’m referring to November 4, 2022. If I use the word today tomorrow, or a week from now, it will mean something else. Certain classes of words are specifically categorized as indexical—personal pronouns (“I,” “we,” “you,” etc.), demonstratives (“this,” “that”), and deictics (“here,” “there,” “now”)—because they are context-dependent, as are many other terms that rely on tone or punctuation to be understood. 

“You see me through you.”

If I call out, “Lucas, baby,” when talking to my dog, the meaning of the phrase is quite different than if I yell, “Lucas!” or resignedly say, “Oh, Lucas…” There are worlds in those words, and the wonderful thing is that Lucas understands immediately what I mean, simply by the tone of my voice, and responds accordingly.

Let’s take a slightly more complex sentence. If one morning I call out, “No, no, no! Don’t eat that!” the that may be referring to a sprig of eucalyptus that fell off the dining room table after I’d made a flower arrangement, or the last chocolate chip cookie in my jar, or a glass marble that’s rolled under a chair, to name just a few of hundreds or thousands of possibilities. The implied you in the sentence could refer to Lucas, or to my friend’s baby, or to my friend. By itself, the word that means nothing—or rather, nothing specific. The same is true for the implied I and you. And yet, as soon as the words leave my mouth, the other being in the room (who may not share my language level or even my species), will immediately know what I’m referring to when I exclaim and in some way point to whatever it is I want them to avoid. That’s the magic of language.

We’re constantly deriving meaning from the world around us and we respond congruently—in most cases—to whatever we experience. Even more astonishing is that we do this consistently, even though we often have very little information to go by. This is wonderful—until it isn’t.

Take a phrase like “I love you,” the kind of statement we make all the time in all sorts of situations. If you’ve ever uttered these words, you likely assumed you knew what you meant when you said them. You knew who you (the I) were. You knew the you you were addressing. And you knew, at least vaguely, what the word love implied. But did you? Did you really know? 

Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of material that you would like to eliminate from your own idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you.

That’s Thomas Merton in No Man Is an Island. Another way of saying this might be: “You see me through you.” We don’t usually see others as they are; we see them as we are. Actually, we see them as we think we are. When I see you, what I see are my wants, wishes, habits, and well-worn memories. I don’t see you—can’t see you—because my I is in the way. So, in order to make sense of you, I make you in my own image, and then I fix you in a now that is long gone. The you I’m speaking to is not the you you were six years ago or six months ago or six minutes ago. It can’t be, given that reality is constantly shifting. This means that even when referring to specific objects, indexicals are pointing to ever-changing entities. Is it any wonder, then, that we misunderstand one another? Is it any wonder we misunderstand ourselves? 

Our misapprehension extends to everything we perceive, from things to beings of all stripes. Yet it’s in our human relationships that the gap between our fantasies and reality is most glaring because we’re so invested in wanting others to be the way we imagine them to be. Yet it’s possible to see clearly, and express what we see. The task may feel a bit like standing on a curb and trying to count the freckles on the face of a driver as a car speeds by. But this is only because we insist on fixing a rushing stream with our language. We use words to label an event that’s long gone. It’s like the story of a fisherman who, after pulling a great catch one day, took a brush and a bucket of paint and drew a big X on the side of his boat.

“What is that for?” a fellow fisherman asked.

“To mark the best fishing spot,” the first man answered.

One of my teachers memorably said, “The self can’t move at the speed of impermanence.” Neither can our words—unless we let them do what they’re capable of doing: flowing, changing, adapting to, and reflecting a reality that won’t stand still because it’s not in its nature to do so. But when we let go of the idea of a fixed self and of fixed meaning, the I and the you and the that and the now—plus all the words we can think and articulate—can shift at the pace that they need to.

In truth, all language is referential and therefore indexical because, like the finger pointing at the moon, our words denote a reality that’s always becoming. Even in its isness—its suchness, as Buddhism calls it—it never is the same for long. How do we speak then, when nothing stands still long enough for us to name it? We could begin by using more capacious language— language that wonders instead of ascertains, and that acknowledges, not just what we think we know, but the vastness of what we don’t yet know.

The poet Galway Kinnell once said: “Never mind. The self is the least of it. Let our scars fall in love.” Maybe, when talking about love, we could say, “Let our blind spots fall in love. Let the stranger in me fall in love with the stranger in you. Let the I that I’m becoming fall in love with the you I haven’t yet discovered and can’t even imagine.” That would be a more realistic way of relating to one another. And, ironically, also more loving.

Practically Speaking

• Begin with the assumption that when you see something or someone, what you’re seeing is some reflection of yourself.

• Decide you want to see more deeply, more truly, more lovingly.

• Ask yourself, “What is this? or “Who are you?”

• Follow with, “Am I sure?”

• Refuse to be satisfied with the easy answer.

• Ask again: “What is this?” “Who are you?”

• Repeat as necessary (that is, often and sincerely).

• Never stop asking.

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