← 10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Happier with Dan Harris
How To Communicate Effectively With Difficult People: When to Tell the Truth, When to Push Back, and Why Kindness Isn't the Same as Being Nice | Sharon Salzberg
01:08:16
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Foreign.
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Hey everybody.
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Welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Today we're talking about Buddhist communication strategies. You've heard me say this before, maybe, but I think about it all the time. The fact that we're talking to each other all day, every day, most of us and, and yet very few of us are ever taught how to have successful communications. Turns out the Buddha had a lot to say about this. And we're going to talk about the Buddhists communication strategies with Sharon Salzberg. We're going to talk about such questions as how do you deal with difficult people? Is it ever okay to gossip? How can you be kind without being a doormat? Are white lies ever okay, even if they're motivated by kindness? There's a lot of juicy stuff in here. Sharon Salzberg is a legend in the meditation community. She's one of the co founders of the Insight Meditation Society, which is a very well known now 50 year old Buddhist retreat center in Barry, Massachusetts. She's also written 13 books including Real Happiness and her landmark work, Loving Kindness. And Sharon has very generously agreed to teach a live eight week series on what's known as the Eightfold Path, which is one of the principal and foundational Buddhist lists. She will be teaching this on my meditation app, the 10% with Dan Harris meditation app, starting on July 12. And it'll be every Sunday a live hour long session over the course of eight weeks. And if you miss the sessions, you can always watch them on demand afterwards. These sessions will be deep dives into the Eightfold Path by a true master. And on each session she will guide a meditation, then talk a little bit about one aspect of the Eightfold Path and then take your questions. So it's an opportunity not only to learn from, but also to be in dialogue with an incredible Buddhist teacher. All that said, we'll be talking to Sharon Salzberg about what's called right speech after this quick break.
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And then he got this beautiful new
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mattress from one of our sponsors, Lisa, and he's been sleeping like a champ and I think I've noticed that his work has gotten even better as a result of that. If you're interested in a new mattress, Hayden and I can heartily recommend Lisa. Summer is one of my favorite times of year, but it can also be full of chaos between travel, family activities, work commitments and trying to enjoy the longer days, and can feel like there's no time to truly unwind. One thing that can help you keep it all going is getting a better sleep on a mattress from Leesa. Leesa has a lineup of beautifully crafted mattresses tailored to how you sleep. Each mattress is designed with specific sleep positions and feel preferences in mind. From one night, you'll feel the difference. Just take the Leesa Sleep Quiz and you'll find your perfect match in two minutes or less. Go to leesa.com for 30% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with the promo code Happier exclusive for my listeners. That's le.com promo code happier for 30% off select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. And when you use our code, you are supporting our show, which we appreciate. Lisa.com promo code happier. Sharon Salsberg, welcome back to the show.
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Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.
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I think you may be one of, if not the most frequent guest on this show, so.
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Oh, shucks.
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It's always awesome to have you.
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Thank you.
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Before we get into
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the Buddhist recommendations for communicating effectively with other human beings,
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let me just step back and ask
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you a broader question. This advice on effective communication is delivered as part of what's known as the Eightfold Path. What is the Eightfold Path?
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Well, the Eightfold Path is actually a framework. It's meant to be a practical, we would say, actionable framework for moving from suffering to the end of suffering. Moving from constriction and limitation to life that's more expansive and open. It's moving from, in a way, isolation to freedom and connection.
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So those are lofty terms, freedom and connection.
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Yeah.
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How would they play out in a, in a, in a generic human life?
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Well, there are different aspects to the, the Eightfold Path. Like I think if you're experiencing loneliness, alienation, if you have a sense that your life is maybe built on a kind of cultural deception, like maybe all your life you thought endless accumulation would keep you safe and keep change from happening. Because that's in a way what we're conditioned to, what we're taught. If you're brought up to believe it's a dog eat dog world and you shouldn't help anybody else because they're not going to help you. And if you're brought up to believe that strength is vengefulness and loving kindness or compassion are stupid and will make you weak or sentimental, then we need to unpack all that and realize I do want to be happy. I want a fulfilled life. I want not to feel so burdened by loneliness and all of those things, but how, you know? And that's why even though the concepts are lofty, they're really meant to be like, let's experiment with this and let's try this and are you different? Are you better? Do you feel more fulfilled? And so on. So it's a very practical approach.
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Do you have to be a Buddhist to practice this aspect of Buddhism?
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No. In fact, one of the things I've enjoyed about the Eightfold Path and it's also embedded, as you know, in the Four Noble Truths, that there's suffering in life, there's a reason for that, there are causes, there's an end, a possible end or a cessation. And there is the path, the Eightfold Path. It's a marker of non sectarianism actually. Like I remember when at the Insight Meditation Society years and years ago, we brought over kind of the patriarch of our lineage, Mahasi Sayadaw from Burma, and people would ask him, you know, like, is it worth following this other teacher or this other approach or this other faith or you know, what about going here, what about combining and what about doing this and, and rather than saying yeah, we got the goods and everyone else is inferior, anything like that, he would just say look to see if the Eightfold Path is there. Look to see if it, if it seems to you. Another mark of the Eightfold Path is that it's holistic. It covers like our inner life and disciplines like with mindfulness and concentration. It also covers things that are very practical in day to day, like livelihood and the way we speak to one another. So he would say look to see if there's a genuinely holistic path there that's going to be integrated, that's going to have these different elements and if so it's good, you know, and so it wasn't a sense of like we're better or you know, you've got to stay within the confines the languaging of Buddhism or anything like that. So look for these elements and then, you know, it's.
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Okay, you mentioned the Four Noble Truths. Let me see if I can provide a little context here and then, but please fact check me because I'm, you know, more, way more about this than I do. But the Buddha, after he got enlightened, you know, according to the, to the legend, he got enlightened when he was 36 after spending his early life as a, as a, you're making a face about 36, was that.
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I was checking 35, I think.
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35, okay.
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No, I was, I had to calculate because he left home at 29.
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Right, right.
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And he spent six years doing those other things.
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So, so up until 29, he was this, you know, this spoiled prince who lived this incredible life. And then he had a bit of a spiritual experience where he realized, you know, life is, is, you know, he is going to end in death and, and illness and old age and, and these things are non negotiable. And so he goes off on a spiritual quest and he lives for six years and he like beats the out of himself. He does what's called self mortification. He doesn't eat. He like stands on one foot all day, does all these crazy medit practices until he realizes, well no, there's, there's got to be a middle path between, you know, self mortification and self indulgence. And that's when he gets enlightened. And after he gets enlightened at age 35, not age 36, he
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goes and
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finds some of his former meditation buddies. And he delivers this. This diagnosis of the human condition called the Four Noble Truths. The first is life is suffering, which is a bit of a mistranslation. It just means life is bumpy if you're living it without wisdom. The second is the. The cause of the bumpiness, the cause of our sufferings is. Is craving or thirst, wanting things to be a specific way in a world where everything's changing all the time. The third is there's a way out of this. And the Fourth Noble Truth is actually a list within a list, and that's the Eightfold Path, which is basically the Buddha's cookbook or recipe for enlightenment, AKA a healthy life. So is all of that reasonably accurate?
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It is. And I don't know if you know, but I'm about to embark on writing a book on suffering and the end of suffering, or dukkha and the end of dukkha. And I like the word bumpiness because the. The word dukkha and Pali, it doesn't just mean suffering, although that's a very common translation. It's also insecurity, distress, unease. And the example they use, of course, is a chariot, because they're all about chariots, and the axle and the wheel are not aligned, so it is like a bumpy ride. So that's a great way of saying it.
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In your conversation with my colleague, our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman, and she gave me notes on your conversation in order to prepare me for this conversation with you. There was a line that she said that you like from the Buddha, something about abandoning the unskillful.
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Can you say more about that?
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I mean, that's another way of describing the Eightfold Path. It's like, what do we do to have a happier, more fulfilled life? Like, what do we actually do? And so this has long, long been one of my favorite passages from the Buddha, where he said, abandon the unskillful. And the unskillful or the unwholesome are those habits, you know, that we get lost in. It's not just the appearance of the habits of mind, but it's the ways we get lost. We get overwhelmed by greed or anger or delusion, something like that. He said, abandon the unskillful. You can abandon the unskillful. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And if abandoning the unskillful were to lead to more limitation on happiness and disconnection, I would not ask you to do it, but because it leads to happiness and fulfillment. So I say abandon that which is unskillful. And then he went on to say, cultivate the good, which in our minds would be like loving kindness or compassion, generosity. Cultivate the good. You can cultivate the good. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And then that last section as well. But I lived. I told Marisa, I lived for a long time, buoyed up by the Buddha, thinks I can do it. If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it. And I took that so to heart in the midst of all of my uncertainty and insecurity and fear and everything, I was really marked by, you know, in those days. And it's like, wow, he thinks I can do it. So step by step, let's put it into practice.
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You've told the story many times, but can you just give us a little bit more context on, you know, how you came to Buddhism and you said you were marked by things like insecurity, et cetera, et cetera. I have to say, having known you for a little while, you came by it honestly.
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Yeah. I went to college when I was 16 and having skipped two grades as a product of the New York City public school system. And in my sophomore year of college, I took an Asian philosophy course because there was a philosophy requirement. And I looked at that schedule and I thought, oh, that fits nicely. That's like, on Tuesday or something. So I chose that one. And it totally changed my life in two ways. One was in learning about Buddhism. They talked about, of course, the Four Noble Truths and the Buddha talking about suffering. And for many people, that's kind of a bummer of a message, you know, But. But for me, it was, like, so enveloping. It was so inclusive. It's like, I, like many people, had had a very traumatic and painful childhood. And like, for many people, my family was one where this was never, ever spoken about. And I don't know what to do with all of those feelings inside of me. And I heard that there is suffering in life. And it was like, for the first time in my life, I didn't feel so alone, and I didn't feel so different and kind of cast aside, you know? And I thought, wow, I belong. You know, it's not just me. It's not that I'm weird, You know, this is. This is part of life. And. And then I heard in the context of that class that there were practices and methods that if you wanted to do them, they're called meditation. You could be a lot happier. And I was going to college In Buffalo, N.Y. looked around Buffalo, couldn't see it anywhere. This is 1969, 1970. And so I did this completely outrageous, almost unthinkable thing looking back. I'd grown up in New York City, went to college in Buffalo. I'd never even been to California. And I created an independent study project. I said, I want to go to India and study meditation. So they said, okay. And off I went. I left in 1970, you know, the beginning of that fall semester. I looked around India. I didn't really find. I wanted something very practical. I wasn't interested in a belief system or becoming a Buddhist or assuming an identity or rejecting anything else. I wanted to know how to do it, how should I really put this into practice? And it took a long time to find. And it actually was in large measure because I heard Dan Goleman way back when give a talk in New Delhi at a yoga conference. He at the time was a graduate student at Harvard studying meditation and psychology. And for some reason he was invited to give a talk at this conference. And at the end of the talk he said that he was going to go to this town called Bodh Gaya, which is where the Buddha was enlightened, and he was going to do this 10 day immersive retreat in meditation that was considered a very practical, direct transmission of these tools. And I thought, that's it. That's what I'm looking for. And it was what I was looking for. So I followed him along with, you know, all these other people. We followed him to Bodh Gaia and, and did this intensive meditation retreat together. And that was the beginning.
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I love that story. And just to say Dan Goleman, who was referenced there, sometimes known as Daniel Goleman, went on to write the seminal book Emotional Intelligence and has been on this show many, many times. I can drop some links to his prior appearances in the show notes. But, you know, I just. That that story and all of the karma and kismet and coincidence and happenstance that goes into it, you know, it's, it's for me very consequential because without you having taken a flyer and gone to India and then running into Dan Goldman and then going to Bod Gaia and where you met, you know, Joseph Goldstein and, and you know, that, that all led to. That was a big stream. There were many streams through which Buddhism arrived in America, but that is a big one. And it is the form of Buddhism that, that, that later, you know, ended up in, in, in on my desk. And that with that spoke to me. And. And so, yeah, it's a. It is of. Of genuine karmic moment. No, no question.
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Well, even when I. When I said it was the beginning, I thought, well, maybe not for Joseph. He'd already been there for years, you know, so.
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But one of the key causes and conditions for what.
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What totally the.
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The massive. Like to use a type of word I don't normally use, but like the massive blessing of. Of. Of inside meditation into. Into the American consciousness.
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Yeah.
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Just back to the Eightfold Path, Sharon. As I understand it, there are three kind of. And you referenced this a little bit earlier, but there are three kind of baskets of.
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There are.
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So there are eight entries in the Eightfold Path, obviously, but there are. They can be grouped into three distinct baskets. One is the kind of philosophical understanding is an ethical conduct in the world, and the third is, you know, how you practice in your own mind. We chose right speech, which is what we're going to talk about today, and that's in the ethical conduct, or sometimes in the language of Pali, in which the Buddhist teachings were written down. It's called Sila S I L A. And I'm interested in right speech or wise speech, depending on how you want to translate the. The way the. The Buddha talked about it. I'm interested in it because. And I'll probably have said this in the introduction, but we spend most of our days in conversation. It is kind of like the principal unit of exchange for Homo sapiens. And yet we're almost never, most of us, taught how to do it. And I find it endlessly fascinating that the Buddha had real advice for doing so.
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Yeah. And I should also say it just came into my mind that my colleague, my friend Sylvia Boorstein, whom I know you've recently spoken to, calls it the Eightfold Dot because it's a little bit circular. We think of a path as very linear. Like, you start here and then you go to the middle place, then you're at the end. You never go back unless you're heading back. But on this path, you don't want to go backwards. But, you know, we revisit elements of it all the time. And so in terms of those three divisions, classically it starts with, like, right intention or right thought, right view. And that's considered almost like, this is worth trying. This is worth experimenting with this cause and effect, this possibility of happiness here. But it's not like a clarified view. Like, I really get in a whole different way how the universe works. And, you know, what makes me happy and what doesn't that comes much later. And in practical terms, when we speak about the path, sometimes we do start with Sela, because that's what we can do right now. We don't realize that we wouldn't even try. I mean, why would you think about, let me try to be more truthful, you know, unless there was some inkling that, yeah, it's, it's so much suffering to feel, you know, like I told these lies and did I tell enough and did I lie to the right people? And what a burden. You know, maybe I want a clearer, simpler way of being and so it doesn't have to be fully formed, that kind of right view. But there's something that has us say, let's, let's try this. Let's try putting this into action. And so often when the Eightfold path is taught, people will start with those elements of Sila, because that's what we do. But traditionally you actually start with right view.
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even planned yet, but my family and
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I have been fantasizing about going to Tokyo. And I was playing around with the Rosetta Stone Sapphire app, and very quickly it was having me say things in Japanese.
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It was, I was talking about a
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In the SILA package, there's right livelihood. So it's like what, what kind of job should you be doing? There's right action, which I think is explanatory, self explanatory and then right speech. And like I said, I find, I find that's why I, I chose this as the focus with you, because I, I think it's so interesting that, that you can you, there's good advice on offer and that you can practice it. It's actually a set of skills and, and as you like to teach it, there are really like four questions to ask yourself before you open your mouth. Let's start with question number one. What, what is that?
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Is it true what you're saying? But there are levels to that, you know. I know you've also worked with Dan Clarman and are amazing communications experts. And I've seen that some of the even formulaic tools of modern communication understanding really reflect this question of is it true? For example, when a Communications person will suggest using I language and not you language, not just being accusatory and laying all of one's response and reactions on the other person. I've actually seen Dan and Mudita work in that way with people, and it was very touching. They've come to the Insight Meditation Society in the past, worked with staff, and I saw one exchange that was something like a staff person saying to another staff person, basically, you're a terrible person and, you know, you don't pay attention to others and you're. You're reckless and whatever. And by continually having the person go back and use I language, not, as they would say, disguise you language, but I language, it came to. I was so hoping to be closer to you. And when you walked by me with lunch tray or something like that, and you didn't sit down and you didn't even look at me, I just thought, wow, you know, maybe it's not gonna happen. And I was like, so disappointed. And as I was witnessing this, this whole exchange, I thought, wow, that's actually the truth of what somebody was going through. And it's not that in every context we wanna be that vulnerable. But I thought, you know, truthfulness is not just the surface level of not telling a blatant lie. It's really going deep within to see what's the truth of my experience in this moment and do I want to express it. So I really like that aspect of it. And of course, there is the more surface level as well, which is still very significant. I often do tell the story about once. I was staying in a house in Western Mass. And a friend of ours had gone to India alone, without her husband to do this retreat. But she didn't want her mother to know that she'd gone alone. And so she basically lied to her mother and said, I'm going with my husband and we'll be back in this and that date. And here's a phone number you can call if you ever, you know, want to try to reach me. That was the phone number of the house I was in. So just a few days before our friend was returning, the mother called. And my friend, whose house it was, who answered the phone, forgot that he was supposed to lie. And so this woman said, have you heard from my daughter or her husband? And he said, oh, yeah, he was just here for dinner. And then he remembered. And so he quickly said, well, he went to India with her and he didn't stay as long. So he came back and right away she really felt she was not being told the Truth. So everybody hung up. And then she called a neighbor and asked them to call us to see, you know, maybe we would tell her the truth even if we wouldn't tell her herself the truth. And so these strangers started calling us and we had a lie to everybody else. And then we realized she was going to call around to other numbers she had. So we had to start calling people and saying, you know, this woman's going to call. You have to lie, and this is what you have to say. And it just kept getting more and more and more complicated. And right in the middle of that, ironically, we started getting these anonymous, obscene phone calls. And normally you might just say, well, I'm not going to answer the phone for a while. But in this case, we had to answer the phone in case it was someone we had a lie to. And then finally whoever was talking to her couldn't bear it anymore and she said, I'm going to tell you the truth. She went to India without him. She's fine. She's coming back like tomorrow or something. You know, it's really, it's really okay. And the woman had been lied to so much, it's like she didn't know what to believe anymore. She didn't know what was true. And even stranger, it's like we hardly knew it was true anymore because we'd gotten so engaged in this web of deception. So even on that blatant level, I think the tool we have which really is a blessing is just self reflection. Like, how does this make me feel? And what's the consequence of living in this way? And what would happen if I chose to skillfully tell the truth in these circumstances?
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Just to go back and underline I language, that is the letter I language. So speaking in your own experience, as opposed to quote unquote, you, language, which is often accusatory, you're a dirt bag, whatever. I have trouble with you when you do. X is often a much more skillful way to communicate. And as you pointed out, really in a broad understanding of truth is a more truthful way to communicate. So. But, but then you went on to tell the story about how lying can be disastrous. I completely, I completely buy your argument and I think everybody listening will buy your argument that if you're even 3% mindful while you're lying, you'll see that it doesn't feel good. But are there not circumstances where a white lie makes sense? My wife, who always looks good no matter what she's wearing, but say hypothetically, she was wearing an outfit that I Didn't like, this has never happened, but just say she was wearing an outfit that I didn't like and she asked me how she looked. What is wrong with me saying, you look great so I can get us out the door and we're not late to the party.
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C
Well, there are questions of intention, you know, which is always a crucial, crucial kind of factor in looking at ethical conduct, which we can talk about. But there's also, you reminded me, and I was very amused by that. You know, I've had many conversations with friends where somebody may present their creative work to you and you really think it's terrible or not very good. And what do you say? So we practice. Like someone told me once, they say, I couldn't be more surprised, or, you must be very proud of that, rather than saying, I don't know about that. But again, context is also very important. It's like if someone is sincerely asking you for feedback, that's a different thing. And then saying it as, you know, not like, you're a terrible writer, you know, but I found myself a little lost here. I wonder if there's a way you could say it or, you know, I so much yearned to know what your experience really was in this moment and what was going on inside. Or, you know, there are ways of offering feedback that are a little more encouraging than, you know, this is a waste of time. But then there's. There are just these sort of more detached things, you know, like you're not really being asked for feedback, you're being asked for praise. And, and maybe you can't get there, you know, in an honest way, but it's fun to imagine what you would say. And then if somebody said it to me, I started thinking, huh, they didn't like what I did. I guess they're just trying to, you know, find a way of cushioning the blow or something like that.
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I remember I sent my brother, who you also know and are friends with, I sent him a version of, of my forthcoming book several years ago that was so long and baggy and self indulgent. And he wrote back, you put your full self into this.
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It's perfect.
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A
That's great. So, but you, you said something before that I want to pick up on that, that intention matters here. You know, this is actually like become a contentious issue. Intent in, in, in some progressive circles there, the argument is it's impact that matters, not your intent. I personally, actually, I'm not sure I fully agree with that. But, you know, how would you think of one's Intention in the context of right speech.
- [35:33]
C
Well, I had a great conversation once with Anu Gupta. I don't know if you know his work.
- [35:38]
A
You know, he's been on the show.
- [35:40]
C
Yeah, yes. So asking him that very question. Because it's true in social justice framing, impact is much more important than intention. But you can't deny that in terms of classical Buddhism, intention is really key. And he readily reconciled those points of view. And the framework I usually use is an action. Something we do, something we say, something we hold back from doing or saying, which is also a kind of action, has different elements to it. And the first is intention or motivation. And that is a crucial distinction. You know, if I was picking up an object and handing it to you, all anybody sees is my hand moving down and picking up something and moving it forward. But what is in my heart? What is the intention? You know, maybe I'm giving it to you because I like you and I want you to have it, or maybe I don't like you and I think you're not going to be able to figure it out. You know, it's going to drive you crazy here, you know, so it's like the same smile and the same gesture, but it's coming from a totally different place. And so it's a potent, potent form of a seed that we're planting. But the next aspect of an action is, you could say, the skillfulness of the execution. It's mindfulness and context. It's cultural context, it's cultural sensitivity. It's understanding. Like, maybe I'm giving you this object out of a very good intention. I don't want to throw it to you, or maybe I only have one and there are 50 people in the room. Maybe it's best done privately. We have to really pay attention to where we are and who we're talking to and what's the context. And that's sort of where the impact part comes alive, that we need that sort of sensitivity and awareness. And those two things are not antithetical to one another. They're just different. And I often emphasize that difference because in teaching loving kindness, meditation so much a great fear, and it's a reasonable fear people express as well. Were I to develop a more loving heart, doesn't that mean I have to say yes, I have to give them more money, I have to let them move back in. I have to let them keep hurting me. And the answer is no. You know, you can come from a very and genuinely compassionate motivation, but I call it your best guess of how to Behave in that moment, in that context most skillfully could be strong boundary or feeling or being kind of fierce, you know, and it might be gentle, it might be strong. You know, it just depends. And that's discernment and wisdom, hopefully, and understanding. But that doesn't mean you're not coming from a compassionate place. And so that is a model I use endlessly in trying to describe, like, yeah, loving kindness doesn't consign us, you know, to being a doormat. It frees us because we can use discernment for how we think we should behave or speak or respond in a certain moment. And it's always good, I think, to
- [38:51]
A
know your intention then in the context of white lies. If your intent, if your intention is to be compassionate, a lot of people think, well, then why can't I tell the white lie?
- [39:04]
C
You might be able to, you know, it's also true, though, that sometimes those are consequential and you don't necessarily want it to unfold. It's like, what if you told your wife she looked great and she went out and bought 15 more outfits just like that one, you know, depending. Again, it's. It's very contextual, you know, you might just say, yeah, you know, it's great. Or you might say, wow, you know, it's good. But, you know, what I really liked was what you wore yesterday. I don't know, something like that.
- [39:37]
A
I've just really let personally where I've. Because I've done enough. I'm not. I'm by no means an advanced meditation practitioner, but I've done enough practice to have a decent mindfulness quotient. It just feels so terrible when I lie that I just tell the truth, but I try to be tell the truth kindly, you know, like, you know what? I actually, I don't love that, but I, you know, I recognize that I'm not. I don't have sophisticated fashion tastes. So if. If you like it, I'm good with it, but, you know, I like the outfit you tried on right before it, you know, so there's. I think there are way. I think that personally, I think there are ways generally to avoid the white lie.
- [40:20]
C
Yeah.
- [40:21]
A
First of four questions. We've covered it. Is it true? What is the second of the four questions?
- [40:28]
C
Is it helpful? You know, they say that to make a commitment to say that which is true doesn't mean that you want to blurt out everything that comes into your head, you know, and maybe somebody doesn't need to hear that, you know, you didn't Think their book was great. Or you know, maybe it's worth being restrained, maybe it's worth saying something later, maybe it's worth not saying anything at all. Like if somebody is about to give a talk, a public talk, and you know, they're pretty anxious about speaking, you know, maybe that's not the time to say, you know, I heard this great talk by this other person and that's going to be hard to beat, not helpful. And again, it comes back to motivation, like what do you want? And that's something I've often said if I was going into an organization or a company to teach. And I'd say before a major meeting, before a big conversation, something like that, ask yourself, what do I really want to see come out of this? You know, do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution? Do I want to mentor somebody? Do I want to grind them into dust? Do I want to be seen as right and superior? You know, take a look and that, that's one way of really coming back to see what your intention is. And if it is genuinely to be helpful, then that again kind of contours what we say or if we'll say something and how we'll say it.
- [41:57]
A
Your next door neighbor and our mutual friend Joseph. Joseph, he has this whole rap, he likes to go deliver around the ancient poly term sampapalapa, which is translated as useless speech. And, and we, we do this all day long. Many of us just say, we just say stuff for the sake of saying it. Social media has put this on steroids. And Joseph says if you're looking underneath the intention when you're about to say something useless, often it's look at me. That to me is like if you're asking us to look at our intentions before we speak, it can be a very humbling thing if we're willing to be honest with ourselves.
- [42:46]
C
Well, there's also, I think that's very, very true. And it's, there are also ways where if we have the inspiration, you know, we make some experiments. It's like when we started teaching in this country and the retreats we were offering were all still pretty much that way, silent. You know, you speak to a teacher which is pretty circumscribed. You know, you're not talking about the last movie you saw, hopefully, you know, you're talking about your practice and your internal experience and you may not speak to anyone else for that 10 day period. I sat with Upan Dita Sayadaw, for example, in 1984, for three months. He was the only person I talked to. And so when you're about to embark in a period of silence, if you choose to, it might be two days, three days, seven days, whatever it is. And often, as people come on to retreat, it's the single most disquieting, you know, uncomfortable thing to think about. And people come and say, I don't know if I can be silent for two days, and my partner doesn't think I can be silent. Or once somebody came and said they're doing a betting pool in my office because they don't think I can be silent. And almost always, really, at the end of the experience, it's one of the single most beautiful aspects of having been there. It's like, for once in our lives, we don't have to present ourselves as interesting or amusing or disturbed or anything. We can just be with ourselves. But we're afraid in general. We're not, most of us brought up to be a friend of silence. And so sometimes that useless kind of speech is. It's just a way of filling in the gaps so that we're not just being okay.
- [44:38]
A
So we've done. Is it true? Is there more to say about. Is it helpful? Or should we move on to the third question?
- [44:45]
C
Honestly, I was thinking about the experience you describe of having a 360 review.
- [44:52]
A
Yeah.
- [44:52]
C
Which you can describe better than I. And so it seemed, from what I've heard about it, when I've heard you talk about it, is that it really provoked some, you know, great introspection and tremendous change. And I know that your. Your next book is gonna cover that, you know, in some way. But that would be an example of something, you know, that it's a little bit like embarking on a period of silence. It's having a certain kind of audacity, you know, to step outside of one's comfort zone and experiment with a different way of giving and receiving speech. So I don't know if you want to say anything about that.
- [45:35]
A
Well, very briefly, as you mentioned, I had a 360 review. This. The first one I had was in 2018, so quite a while ago. But it was very humbling experience. I actually remember sending the results to you because they were. They were quite harsh. 39 pages. First 11 pages were like, positive stuff, and the rest of it was just straight beat down. There are four major buckets of kind of emotional unavailability, a stubbornness, dismissiveness, kind of black and white thinking over commitment. I can't remember all the things, but that those are the Basic areas. And I remember coming to your apartment and talking to you about it afterwards. I was totally distraught. But yes, it's an audacious thing to do to ask for that level of feedback. I don't actually think that it's, it's for everyone. I, It's a, it's often used in a corporate context and if it, if you don't have good coaching to go with it, it can. I happen to have good coaching and also just know a lot of really wise people like you who can help me with it. The 360 reviewers, the people. It's an anonymous survey of the people you work with. And in my case, I added in like my wife and my brother and, and, and Joseph and, and so it was like a personal and professional360 review to get a panoramic sense of my strengths and weaknesses. And, and the reviewers, the people who were surveyed, they were actually engaging in right speech. Even though a lot of what they said was. Some of it was harsh and maybe actually some of it crossed the line to wrong speech and that it was unkind, which we will get to soon. But it was certainly solicited. I was asking for their feedback and they were giving it. They weren't talking, you know, crap behind my back. They were, they were giving me feedback in a, in a, in a context where I asked for it.
- [47:31]
C
And so it was helpful. And in the end, right?
- [47:34]
A
Yes, deeply, I would say right below the birth of our son and our marriage. As you know, the most important thing that has happened to me as an adult, it provoked an enormous amount of change and drove me way deeper into your. Your personal bailiwick. Sharon Salzberg of loving kindness and a supporter of it. But I, not as I. It forced me to engage much more deeply with those practices, which has been just incalculable in its, in its impact. I made a new friend recently and he was telling me that his wife
- [48:15]
B
is an avid listener to the show. She's so loyal, in fact, that she's
- [48:19]
A
now wearing quints on the regular. And she wanted me to know that
- [48:22]
B
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- [48:24]
A
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B
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A
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B
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- [50:06]
A
So question number three so we again just to reset four questions to ask yourself if you're trying to engage in right speech. Is it true? Is it helpful? The third is, is it timely? Is this the right time to say the thing?
- [50:18]
C
Yeah, and I think that's very connected to is it helpful? It's like if you, if you have a friend or an acquaintance who just got a really difficult diagnosis and it may not be the time and it may not be that helpful to give them advice, you know, and a lot of people who are feeling that kind of vulnerability and, you know, everything, the fear and everything that goes with that kind of situation often tell me they feel a little bombarded, you know, by advice. And I use the example in something I'd written of Ram Dass, who was also at my very first retreat in 1971. And I've been a friend ever since. And after his stroke, which was a very, very significant stroke, I remember he was in the rehab hospital and then he was still living in California. And I went to visit him in California and his living room was piled high with, you know, things people had sent. And it was beautiful. It was really a gesture, you know, based on how much he had given the world and how he was held and the kind of regard he was held in but sometimes it would. These notes that accompanied the whatever, and it would say, like, take 15 drops of this and you'll definitely be walking again. And I could feel his internal experience of that was pressure. And it sort of translated into like, will you still love me if it doesn't work? Will you still be here with me, or will you see me as having failed you in some way? And. And when I was there visiting him, one of those arrived and it was a bottle of Ganges water, water from the Ganges River. And I had a note that said something like, take 15 drops of this and you'll be okay within two weeks. And I said, don't drink that. Whatever you do, don't drink that. You'll get cholera if you drink that. You know, like, for God's sake. So it's the way, you know, like, when someone seems to be in their most vulnerable spot, is that the time or is that going to be helpful in the end to impose that kind of pressure, which is really just about you, you know, like, I saved you in. In some way. So again, it's really important to look at intention and to look at context to try to figure that out just for context.
- [52:47]
A
On Ram Dass, for people who don't know who he is, he's a great spiritual teacher and writer. He is perhaps most famous for his book, Be Here now, but there are some documentaries on him that are on Netflix that are worth watching. And he did have a stroke and really handled with uncommon grace in terms of timeliness. There's another tool from the aforementioned Dan Clurman and Mudita Nisker, who are great communications coach coaches in the Buddhist tradition that I found really helpful. You know, when I'm talking to somebody who is in, you know, extremists, there, there's something big going on. They've gotten a diagnosis or they've made a big mistake and they feel under siege.
- [53:29]
B
And
- [53:31]
A
instead of. Or. Or they're just anxious about something instead of moving into advice, which is generally. Is not generally what people want. What. Generally what I think people want and what I certainly want in these experience, in these moments, is just to be seen and heard, validated. A tool that I learned from Dan and, And Mudita is reflective listening, where you simply listen to what somebody's saying and then repeat back the. The bones of what they've said to you, the kind of headline version in your own words. And. And that really is just giving people this incredible gift of. Of. Of feeling like they're seen and heard. So anyway, does that Feel like an appropriate thing to say in this context?
- [54:16]
C
It does, I think, very much so. And I tell a story somewhere which was also from a million years ago. You know, it's like living in India. There's just this array of spiritual gurus and perspectives and methodologies. And somebody came to me once, this young man, and he said, I'm thinking of bringing my father to India to meet this one particular guru whom I'd also met. And he said to me, what do you think? And I said, well, you know, it's sort of like a hard place. It's a hard city. It'll be incredibly hot. There'll be bugs if you. He may not like the food, he might get sick in any way. Guru is a little weird. You know, it's like the scene is, is strange and it might not work, but he didn't listen to me and he went and did it anyway. And it turned out the father fell totally in love with the guru and became like a disciple of the guru and became a teacher in the guru's lineage. And like, I couldn't have been more wrong. And I thought back to that moment, you know, where I say, why was I inter, you know, lacing my view, my experience, instead of, as you said, just listening, saying, well, what is it you hope for? You know, and, and what's he like? You know, is he the kind of person that you think would, would take offense at this or, you know, just like actually having a genuine communication? I just sort of laid out, well, my experience was, you know, like this. And I'm sure it won't be, it won't be okay.
- [55:51]
A
Why do you think it is that we rush to advice to, or rush to fix or rush to pontificate in these moments? Is it, is it some unease that we're covering up for?
- [56:04]
C
Well, no doubt. You know, I mean, I think we're also, we tend to be rather self preoccupied rather than connecting. You know, it's like we meet somebody and, and largely what's going on in our minds is what do they think of me? You know, the day they like me, do they like me more than they've ever liked anyone before? I know I said something stupid, they hate me. You know, instead of actually in a way, kind of emptying and being there and taking them in and noticing. And one of the detriments to being so self preoccupied is that we lose the capacity to be surprised by people, you know, and just to have that kind of, oh, that's interesting. And boy, that's unexpected. I wouldn't have thought that. And, you know, because there's not necessarily genuine connection going on. So, I mean, I think in the case of just kind of reciting advice, you know, it's. It's about being seen as right, you know, and having the correct opinion and, you know, maybe being remembered as the one who warned you off against doing that thing or whatever. And it's a pretty lonely way of being in the end, because we're not actually connecting in a genuine way.
- [57:15]
A
Fourth question is, I think, the thorniest in some ways. So just to reset again. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it timely? The fourth is, is it kind? So I have a million questions for you about this, but. But why don't you just set the table?
- [57:33]
C
Well, I would go back to that model that I. I was talking about of the intention behind in action, and then our best guess of what's most skillful in that moment in time as a way of expressing something, because we can look at what our motive is. It's like, do I want to be seen as right? Do I want to try to be helpful? Do I want to extend some compassion? This person's going through something really hard, you know, and do I just want to acknowledge that in terms of, you know, is that my intention is to say, you're not so alone in some way, you know, so the kindness is embedded in the intention. One of the things I'm sort of liking these days, out of current, maybe pop psychology, is the distinction between being kind and being nice, you know, and so the nice part would have to do with that second aspect of action, which is the. The expression or the manifestation, the skillful or unskillful manifestation of. Of the intention in that moment. And so maybe there is a time when it feels most appropriate to be strong, you know, and not to just try to please the other person, but hopefully in a skillful way to say what we feel we have to say, or to have a strong boundary or to say no or whatever it might be, and the kindness is still there. And that we're not trying to harm somebody, we're not trying to hurt anybody, perhaps. And yet, you know, what seems most appropriate is not saying yes and being sweet and being meek or something like that.
- [59:16]
A
There's another classic Sharon story that's coming to mind that's not fully apropos because it's not on speech. It's not totally on point on the subject of speech. But I think it is illuminating in this context that you, early on in your days in India, and you were still young and new to the practice. And you were listening to some teachers talking about the importance of kindness. And you said something the effect of, like, what if I go out on the street and. And here in India and there are pickpockets all over the place? What do I do? I let them pick my. Pick my pockets. And the teacher said, no, you should very compassionately smack them with your umbrella. And.
- [59:56]
C
Okay, I'm gonna tell you what really happened.
- [59:58]
A
Okay? Okay.
- [59:59]
C
Because that is one of my stories and one of my experiences. And it's so funny, because we're talking about a long time ago. I mean, the Insight Meditation Society just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and we were in India before then. So I hear this story, and people say it in all kinds of different ways. So what actually happened was I'd gone to Bagayan, Calcutta, maybe six or seven hours away from one another by train. So I'd gone to Calcutta for some reason with this friend of mine. We were heading back to Gaia, to Bodh Gaya, and going to the train station in Calcutta. There was something going on in the street. There was some kind of riot, so we couldn't get a cab or something like that. And the only means of transportation we could find to get back to the train station was a rickshaw. And in Calcutta in those days, I don't know about now, the rickshaws were not men on bicycles. They were men running. So you were in this carriage, and this guy was pulling you along, running. So he's going down these dark side streets and alleyways, and this very large, very drunken man came out of the shadows and stopped him and went to grab me, to pull me off. And I thought, oh, my God, you know, I'm going to be raped. I'm going to be murdered. And the person I was with, the man I was with, managed to shove him aside and got the guy to start running again. So we got to the train station, got, you know, after the train ride, got back to Bodh Gaya and went to see this teacher, Meningra. And I was still very shaken up by it. And I told him the whole story. And he said to me, oh, Sharon, with all the loving kindness in your heart, you should have taken your umbrella and hit that man over the head. So that's what happened. And, you know, I knew you were going to tell that story, you know, in some fashion when you started speaking. And, you know, of course, a lot of times we hit people over the head, and we think, well, it was coming from a Loving place, but was it really, you know, so there we have the ability for introspection and for really self reflection, see where we're coming from, but we don't as you know. You know, that mistake is so fundamental that from loving kindness we're just gonna be so doormat like, you know, that it's just not the way it works.
- [62:25]
A
Is it kind. The injunction toward kindness in our speech does not mean we shouldn't speak up for what we believe in in a political context online or irl. We shouldn't go to a protest. We shouldn't have firm words with our spouse or our child or the proverbial obnoxious uncle. It's, it's about like what is in your heart as you're doing this? Are you, are, are you being firm and maybe even slightly harsh from the, from a mind of, of loving kindness.
- [63:06]
C
Exactly. You know, and what an amazing thing that we can look back hopefully without a lot of judgment to see our intention. You know, if you're full of judgment and shame, and that's not going to really work either, but to understand, you know, we have lots of different kinds of conditioning and things will come up, we don't have to necessarily follow them out and live by them, but, you know, we can see them and abandon that which is unskillful and cultivate the good and I mean, what a breathtaking potential for human life.
- [63:41]
A
Okay, well, here's, here's the really juicy question though. Is it ever okay to gossip?
- [63:46]
C
Probably we will. You know, I, I've heard people say that it's, it's like a tribal ritual. It's good, you know, you can find your people, but, but I think it's so interesting to look at not only the intention, but also the, the nature of the gossip. It's like I have, you know, I use the example sometimes of like you're about to say something about someone else. That's really belittling. It's true, but it's, it's belittling. And sometimes, like I ask myself, or we can ask ourselves, like, why? What would be the result of turning this person against this other person? Or, you know, what would be the good of this person knowing this about this other person? And sometimes we just practice restraint. But you don't have to be like holier than thou or uptight or, or anything. You can be relaxed in your speech, but, or, you know, what would it be like if you said something about another person and then they walked in the room like two and a half minutes later, like what would that feel like? And, and realizing just because something is ordinary or conventional or familiar doesn't mean it brings us anything, you know, that's worth having in terms of our fulfillment or our happiness in life. So it's not bad to pay attention to those elements as well.
- [65:14]
B
But I do want to go back
- [65:15]
A
to something you said a moment ago, and I didn't pick up on it, and I want to pick up on it now, which is, you didn't say this, but I'm going to say it because I'm pretty sure you, you will say it or would have said it. Nobody's expecting perfection here. The, the, the point is to bring some curiosity and introspection, both in the moment when you can remember and ex post facto, if you can, you know, bear it. But the point is not to shame yourself. You, you are it. If you take this seriously, you are likely to see some things that are unflattering. But the shame is not going to help. As I once heard a great teacher whose initials are Sharon Salzberg, say, the mind filled with shame cannot learn. And so I often call, in my scatological way, shame. I often call it these psychic constipation, like nothing can move through if you're just stuck in a story of I'm a bad person. I, I, of course, that thing, because my intention is to belittle to and to self aggrandize. So, yeah, just say a little bit more about why shame is not helpful.
- [66:26]
C
Yeah, that was actually a quotation from Eve Ekman, who said just that the brain filled with shame cannot learn. And it's really true, you know, like, even some people, going back to our initial conversation, some people, in describing the Eightfold Path, don't like that term right, you know, right speech, right action, right livelihood. And yet that is the classical translation. They don't like right because of the likelihood of somebody then judging themselves and blaming themselves. And I'm all wrong, and it's so terrible. But right in the sense just. You could say it means onward leading rather than being stuck. You could say it means being in harmony with how things are. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be happy, you know, because it doesn't mean wanting endless pleasure or domination over others. It means genuine kind of happiness. And when we align ourselves with the things that will help bring it. First of all, our own happiness in that sense gives us resilience and an ability to help others, which we don't have if we just feel broken and overwhelmed and exhausted all of the time. So we work on those things that will build that capacity up. And it's. It's good for us, it's good for others. And that's what's right, you know, is to orient ourselves toward that. And. And wanting that is not greed. Which people often ask me, you know, isn't that selfish to want to be happy? And I say, no, it's not greed. It's science. You know, if I have all this material goods and I never share anything, I feel I never have enough, you know, that's not a happy state. And, you know, why not see that generosity produces happiness and then embark on a path, or if I spent all my time just disparaging others. I really do think we live in a culture of disparagement in terms of speech, where we're taught you will feel better about yourself if you just put others down. You know, we see it again and again. Like, I don't watch much reality tv, for example, you know, but occasionally in someone's house, someone will have something on. And I remember watching this cooking show, and it was just terrible. You know, instead of somebody, you know, being dismissed with, you know, that was a really good souffle, but I think it could have made it more interesting with more spice or something like that. It was like, take your knives and go. And it was like, you don't deserve to be alive. You know, and we call that entertainment. So we've got lots of conditioning about what happens if you make a mistake, what happens if you're not number one, you know, how should you feel about yourself? And it's a lot of work, but it's the most liberating work of all to realize we can see these things within ourselves. Not as bad or wrong, but painful. And out of compassion for ourselves, embark on a path that's more fulfilling, you know, and is happier.
- [69:38]
A
Abandoning the unskillful.
- [69:40]
C
Yeah.
- [69:41]
A
How do we remember, right, speech when we're in the middle of a conversation with a difficult person?
- [69:47]
C
Well, this is also practice. We can practice when we're not in the heat of, you know, a conversation with a difficult person, because the more we practice any skill in a kind of boring, somewhat boring, ordinary time, it is a little bit like going to the gym and you're building up that strength so that when things are harder, more complicated, more demanding, then it's more familiar. So I would suggest that, like, make it a habit. So one of the things I decided in the beginning of the pandemic, you know, I was in Barry, Mass. The center was closed all My travel plans were dashed and so I decided I was going to undertake these practices just to make it a more enriched and useful time. So one of the practices I decided on was that I wasn't going to write an email and just press send because it is a medium of communication which can so often lead to misunderstanding and confusion. It's so terse. And so I thought I was going to write an email, read it again, put myself in the position of the recipient, and then decide if I wanted to edit it or just send it. And this is all these years later, I still do that, and most of the time I edit it because it's the nature of that sort of medium. So we can undertake practices of speech in one form or another and bring them to bear and just experiment with them. And then when you're in the heat of a conversation with a difficult person, the simplest thing, usually as a mirror for our feelings, is the body. You know, what am I feeling? What sensations are coming up? And that becomes our feedback system. So I also often tell the story about a friend of mine who described herself as the kind of person who could basically never say no. She had a very hard time saying no in all these different situations. So she said, like, she'd be at work and she'd be asked to do things that really were not her job, but she would feel like she had to say yes. And so in her meditation practice, in her meditation practice, one of the things she did was consciously bring up those kinds of situations. And, you know, she'd imagine somebody asking her something and. And she really studied what happened in her body because the feeling of which is really panic came up in her stomach before the thought, maybe they won't like me anymore if I say no. And so she studied that feeling and that became her feedback system. So that when she was at work and she would be asked that very kind of question and she'd feel that very thing, that was her signal to say, I'll have to get back to you. And then once she had some space, she could actually say no. So the body will reveal a lot of things and that can be our signal, like maybe don't answer right away, or maybe say you need some time to think about something, or to say, well, I think of whatever you're proposing differently. Do you want to hear what, you know, my perspective is? Or something, you know, it'll just help guide us.
- [73:11]
A
This has been a great conversation. I'm completely unsurprised by that fact. Before I let you go, though, can
- [73:18]
B
you just Talk a little bit about
- [73:20]
A
this event you're doing on the 10% app, this eight week series of live events around the Eightfold path. Seth, I'm super excited and super grateful to you for doing it. But yeah, talk a little bit about why you wanted to do it and what it will be.
- [73:39]
C
I am doing several things for that app. I'm doing some, I'm doing that series. I'm ultimately doing a course with Andy Gonzalez from the Holistic Life foundation, which is especially designed for people who care for other people in some way. The Eightfold Path is like our living legacy. You know, it is the actionable part of what we can do. You know, it's one thing to feel sense of dissatisfaction in your life or things could be better. And it's another thing to feel creative and that you have agency and that there are things you can experiment with and try out. So that's really the Eightfold Path. And that will be eight different sessions.
- [74:31]
A
Yes, eight different sessions all live on Sundays through throughout the summer. And if you miss it, you can watch it on on replay. And we're gonna turn it into a course on the Eightfold Path by Sharon Salzberg. But she's also creating another course with our mutual friend Andy Gonzalez around specifically a meditation and content aimed at people who are caregivers, which honestly is most of us. Whether you're a parent or you have an aging parent or you as you move through the day, you, you are many of us, there are moments where we are caregivers for friends who need help or maybe we're volunteers or yeah, any. Or we're in a caregiving profession. There are lots of use cases for this. This second course you will also be creating for us. Anyway, Sharon, you're the best. Thank you for doing this.
- [75:29]
C
Thank you so much.
- [75:31]
B
Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10 Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go. If you enjoy this show, please do me slash us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on. It only takes a minute. It's free and it really helps new people find us and spread the good
- [76:11]
A
news that the mind is trainable.
- [76:13]
B
Thank you sincerely.
- [76:14]
A
I mean it. Thank you.
- [76:21]
B
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- [76:52]
A
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- [76:56]
D
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