Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (32 page)

10.
Find something in what the other says that you agree with
. If someone is speaking very unskillfully and resorts to calling you a jerk, even in this case, you can agree: “You know, you’ve got a point. I’ve probably done several jerky things already today.” This is especially useful in dealing with someone hostile. You have agreed in part. You have not taken on the totality of the label “jerk”—you’ve just admitted to an aspect of it. Who has not done some things that may be considered jerky?

This can be followed up with:

11.
Request more information.
That is: “Tell me more about what you mean when you say I’m a jerk.” This one-two combination of agreement and requesting more information deflates anger in a powerful way. Note that this is not a violation of the principle of self-love. In fact, it takes real self-love to concede the possibility of having done some
particular
things in an unskillful manner, while maintaining an overall attitude of self-worth and self-acceptance. However, these things may prove difficult to do emotionally unless you have adequately prepared the ground.

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12.
Avoid premature problem solving
. You know who you are, all you well-intentioned fixers and problem solvers out there. You can hardly help yourself; you rattle off the answers and solutions to other people’s problems at the drop of a hat. “Why don’t you just . . .” “All you need to do is . . .” But perhaps you have noticed, albeit with frustration, that others do not always seem to embrace your generous, freely offered wisdom. If you get frustrated because your suggestions are greeted with

“Yes, but,” consider this a message. The other person may be trying to tell you: “Please, I want to feel
understood
. Your advice sounds easy and then I feel silly for even having these feelings. Just try to understand.”

If you are unsure whether the other person wants problem solving or sympathetic listening, there is an effective strategy: ask. But be careful. You must ask in a way that shows openness toward either possibility, not with a tone that subtly suggests, “You don’t really want constructive help, because you are not open to advice.”

13.
The stranger rule
. We sometimes are more polite to a stranger on the street than to the people we are closest to. Try to be at least as courteous with the people you are close to as you would be with a stranger. Say please. Say thank you, you’re welcome, excuse me. 14.
Practice mindfulness of vocal tone, facial expression, gesture, and body
language.
Often people respond more to the
way
in which we say something than to
what
we actually say. Sometimes I have had couples turn on a tape recorder before discussing an issue. This can be very revealing. On tape, people hear how their tone of voice contradicted the message they thought they were giving. An exaggerated example is the singsongy, sarcastic way the comedian Steve Martin used to say, “Well, ex-cuuuuuse meeeeeee!” If you do that in a discussion, later you can argue, “But all I said was, ‘Excuse me.’ I was just being polite!”

15.
Practice mindfulness of the effect of what you say and how you say it.
When do your words create closeness—an atmosphere of acceptance?

When do they seem to create distance or defensiveness? If your words are not having the effect you wish, perhaps there is a more skillful way. No list of guidelines could ever be fully adequate. But if you pay attention to the feedback you get from others, monitoring whether your words create more openness and closeness or distance and defensiveness, you can guide what you say in the direction of greater effectiveness and skill. 08 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:00 AM Page 207

It is a Zen principle that rules can never be fully adequate guides to our behavior. When we are fully alive and awake in the present moment, we know what to do and what not to do. And while the above rules are useful, there is a time when they must be abandoned. This is killing the Buddha when you meet him, so that Buddha comes to life in you instead of being an idol. In Christopher Isherwood’s
Ramakrishna and His Disciples
the gentle Hindu saint Ramakrishna tells a parable about a guru who reforms a poisonous snake. But there was a problem: The guru’s teaching had worked all too well. Since everyone knew he would no longer fight back, the poor snake, who previously had terrorized the neighborhood, was now himself terrorized and abused. When the guru saw the snake again, he was barely alive, so badly had he been treated. Hearing the account of what he had suffered from others, the guru said, “For shame!

. . . Are you such a fool that you don’t know how to protect yourself ? I told you not to bite. I didn’t tell you not to hiss. Why couldn’t you have scared them away by hissing?”

Ramakrishna summarized: “You have to hiss at wicked people. You have to scare them, or they’ll harm you. But you must never shoot venom into them. You must never harm them.”

In another example, one of Ramakrishna’s disciples returned from the marketplace only to discover he’d been cheated by a pious-talking shopkeeper. Ramakrishna told him: “The shopkeeper was there to do business, not to practice religion. Why did you believe him and get cheated? Just because you’re a devotee, that’s no reason to be a fool.”

The reason to practice right speech is not ultimately about following rules or moralisms or even about being a good person. Speech is “right”

when it leads in the direction of peace and happiness, when it liberates us and others from suffering.

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Encourage Loving Action

Action, it is said, speaks louder than words. And certainly it is the case that loving, kind words carry little weight if not supported by loving, kind action.

When we make the heart larger through metta meditation, we find that loving action flows easily. Often it is not when we set about selfconsciously doing some good deed that we are helpful, but when we just are who we are. A tree helps the world by being a tree and following its own nature. It does not have to tell itself, “I must do something to help the world! I must create oxygen, I must bear fruit!” Just being itself, it helps and blesses the world.

We, too, are generally most helpful when we just take good care of ourselves, practicing calmness and understanding. This is even true with professional helpers like therapists. When a therapist tries too hard, self-consciously attempting to be helpful, her efforts often backfire. When a therapist seeks, more modestly, simply to understand, taking care of herself so she does not get lost in sadness, this is often the most helpful thing of all. We help the people we are closest to most by cultivating happiness and peace in ourselves. Others feel better just being around such a peaceful, happy person.

But this is not to deny the importance of intentional action. It is a good practice to wake up in the morning and ask yourself, “What can I do this day to bring some happiness to the people I love?” and then seek to put a few such things into practice each day.

In behavioral therapy for couples, healthy human relationships are seen as a positive cycle of doing things for each other. The more George does loving things for Mary, the more she in turn is inspired to do loving things for him. And the more she does for him, the more George does back, and so on. This positive cycle of interaction contrasts sharply with what happens in troubled relationships. In troubled relationships, people trade hurtful behaviors in a negative, escalating cycle. Because George hurt Mary, Mary hurts George, who hurts her back, and so on. Unless something intervenes to change it, this negative cycle continues, often intensifying with each exchange. Fortunately, positive cycles of interaction tend to continue their momentum as well. The goal of the couples’ therapist is to take advantage of this fact and reestablish a positive cycle. Even if this is done in a me-08 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:00 AM Page 209

It is difficult to restart the positive cycle. When you are stuck in a negative interaction cycle with someone, it is hard to cut across the grain of your hurt and anger by doing kind things for the other person. The fear of being taken advantage of comes into play. This fear is seldom warranted, as the documented effectiveness of this type of therapy shows. Most people will respond to repeated, consistent kindness. But in an emotional sense, it can be quite difficult to start doing nice things when you are angry and hurt. Practicing metta meditation can help a lot with this emotional barrier.

Identify What Loved Ones Truly Want

Sometimes people devote a lot of time and energy to doing helpful, loving things, but the effort is wasted because they are not the right things, or at least not the best ones. George might knock himself out fixing Mary’s car, trying through many hours of difficult, dirty work to do something nice for her. But it may be that Mary would just as soon take the car to a mechanic. It may be that George would receive more appreciation for giving Mary fifteen minutes of deep listening about her work day than for many hours of hard labor on her car. Similarly, Mary might spend hours preparing a dinner for George that would put Martha Stewart to shame. But if George is basically a meat-andpotatoes guy, Mary’s efforts are largely wasted. George might appreciate it far more if Mary watched a little football with him and honestly tried to understand the game and his passion for it. If Mary and George do the wrong things for each other, not only are they wasting effort, but they risk feeling even more discouraged. “See, he never appreciates the things I do.” “See, it doesn’t matter how much I do for her.” Out of discouragement, each then becomes less likely to make further efforts.
But if they look deeply and with insight, they will see
that it is not so much the case that what they did was not appreciated, as that
they were not doing the right things.
In fixing the car and preparing the meal, they were really doing what they themselves wanted, not what the other person wanted.

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we are doing things for the other person, we have not seriously tried to understand what the other person really wants, but we do things we like to do, or things we want to be appreciated for. So how do we know for sure what the other person likes? The answer, which is again surprisingly simple, is to
ask
. In my work with couples, I have them rate how much they like a particular thing on a numeric scale. This artificialseeming device clarifies a lot. Because if asked how much she likes having lasagna made for her supper and how much she likes having the shopping done, the answer may be, in both instances, “a lot.” But if she rates it from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most wonderful), the lasagna may be a 6 and the shopping a 9. This provides considerably more information than “a lot.”

Talk to those you share life with about what they like so your energy can be focused appropriately. Otherwise, you may burn yourself out on kindnesses that are simply the wrong things, and then feel unappreciated. Express Appreciation

Another important kindness is expressing appreciation in a meaningful way. Most people, if asked, would say that they make a point to express appreciation to others. Yet most of us would also agree that the world we live in is short on appreciation. How can both be true? If you were to actually monitor how many times in a week you express meaningful appreciation to someone—appreciation that goes beyond what might be considered bare politeness—you would be surprised at how infrequently you do this. Yet honest, warm, sincere appreciation is one of the things that contributes profoundly to our sense of connectedness, for both the giver and the receiver, and is essential in maintaining positive cycles of interaction.

Some people object to the behavioral description of human interactions as too mercenary, too much of a trade or a business and not enough of the heart. Yet it is undeniable that positive cycles of interaction do have an aspect of exchange or trade, and this is necessarily so. But in healthy, positive cycles there is no literal tit for tat, no close keeping of accounts. The Buddhist view of no self sheds light here. Once you see that we are not as separate as we generally believe, the boundary between giving and receiving blurs. I give, at the same time know-08 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 10:00 AM Page 211