The Art of Communicating: Mastering Life's Most Important Skill Through Mindfulness, Personal Growth, and Effective Interpersonal Relations with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

by Thich Nhat Hanh

We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food.

The energy of mindfulness is a necessary ingredient in healthy communication. Mindfulness requires letting go of judgment, returning to an awareness of the breath and the body, and bringing your full attention to what is in you and around you.

Toxic conversation can be difficult to avoid, especially at work. If it is going on around you, be aware. You need to have enough mindful awareness not to absorb these kinds of suffering. You have to protect yourself with the energy of compassion so that when you listen, instead of consuming toxins, you’re actively producing more compassion in yourself. When you listen in this way, compassion protects you and the other person suffers less.

Nourishing and healing communication is the food of our relationships. Sometimes one cruel utterance can make the other person suffer for many years, and we will suffer for many years too.

Love, respect, and friendship all need food to survive.

We believe too much in the technologies of communication. Behind all these instruments we have the mind, the most fundamental instrument for communication. If our minds are blocked, there is no device that will make up for our inability to communicate with ourselves or others.

We think that with all our technological devices we can connect, but this is an illusion.

To stop and communicate with yourself is a revolutionary act. You sit down and stop that state of being lost, of not being yourself. You begin by just stopping whatever you’re doing, sitting down, and connecting with yourself. This is called mindful awareness. Mindfulness is full awareness of the present moment. You don’t need an iPhone or a computer. You just need to sit down and breathe in and out. In just a few seconds, you can connect with yourself. You know what is going on in your body, your feelings, your emotions, and your perceptions.

Usually, we are in a hurry to send our e-mails and texts. As soon as we finish writing them, we press send and they are gone. But there’s no need to rush. We always have time for at least one in-breath and out-breath before we pick up the phone or before we press send on a text or e-mail. If we do this, there is a much greater chance that we will be putting more compassionate communication out into the world.

outwardly with more clarity. The way in is the way out. Mindful breathing is a means of communication, just like a phone. It promotes communication between the mind and the body. It helps us know what we’re feeling.

To remind ourselves to pay attention to our breath, we can say silently: Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out. “The air is entering my body. The air is leaving my body.”

Breathing in and breathing out is a practice of freedom. When we focus our attention on our breath, we release everything else, including worries or fears about the future and regrets or sorrows about the past. Focusing on the breath, we notice what we’re feeling in the present moment.

we’re overloaded with fear, anger, regret, or anxiety, we’re not free, no matter what position we hold in society or how much money we have. Real freedom only comes when we’re able to release our suffering and come home. Freedom is the most precious thing there is. It is the foundation of happiness, and it is available to us with each conscious breath.

Nonthinking is a very important practice. Of course, thinking and talking can be productive too, especially when our minds and feelings are clear. But a lot of our thinking is caught up in dwelling on the past, trying to control the future, generating misperceptions, and worrying about what others are thinking.

Mindfulness lets us listen to the pain, the sorrow, and the fear inside. When we see that some suffering or some pain is coming up, we don’t try to run away from it. In fact, we have to go back and take care of it. We’re not afraid of being overwhelmed, because we know how to breathe and how to walk so as to generate enough energy of mindfulness to recognize and take care of the suffering.

Breathe in a way that gives you pleasure. When you sit and breathe mindfully, your mind and body finally get to communicate and come together. This is a kind of miracle because usually the mind is in one place and the body in another.

Breathing in, I’m aware of my body. Breathing out, I release all the tension in my body.

While you walk, you can say to yourself, I have arrived. I am home. These words are not a mere declaration or an affirmation practice. They are a realization. You don’t need to run anywhere. Many of us have run all our lives. Now we get to live life properly.

Acknowledging our feelings without judging them or pushing them away, embracing them with mindfulness, is an act of homecoming.

We know that the suffering inside us contains the suffering of our fathers, our mothers, and our ancestors. Our ancestors may not have had a chance to get in touch with the practice of mindfulness, which could help them transform their suffering. That is why they have transmitted their unresolved suffering to us. If we are able to understand that suffering and thereby transform it, we are healing our parents and our ancestors as well as ourselves.

But there is a way of getting in touch with the suffering without being overwhelmed by it. We try to avoid suffering, but suffering is useful. We need suffering. Going back to listen and understand our suffering brings about the birth of compassion and love. If we take the time to listen deeply to our own suffering, we will be able to understand it.

Understanding suffering gives rise to compassion. Love is born, and right away we suffer less. If we understand the nature and the roots of our suffering, the path leading to the cessation of the suffering will appear in front of us. Knowing there is a way out, a path, brings us relief, and we no longer need to be afraid.

Understanding suffering always brings compassion. If we don’t understand suffering, we don’t understand happiness. If we know how to take good care of suffering, we will know how to take good care of happiness. We need suffering to grow happiness. The fact is that suffering and happiness always go together. When we understand suffering, we will understand happiness. If we know how to handle suffering, we will know how to handle happiness and produce happiness.

when we have compassion for ourselves, we can more easily understand the suffering of another person and of the world. Then our communication with others will be based on the desire to understand rather than the desire to prove ourselves right or make ourselves feel better. We will have only the intention to help.

When you see the suffering inside yourself, you can see the suffering in the other person, and you can see your part, your responsibility, in creating the suffering in yourself and in the other person.

Self-understanding is crucial for understanding another person; self-love is crucial for loving others.

If we can be aware of our in-breath and out-breath, we will remember that the one goal of compassionate communication is to help others suffer less. If we remember this, we’ve already succeeded. We’re already contributing to more joy and less suffering.

there is a Buddha inside each of us. “The Buddha” is just a name for the most understanding and compassionate person it’s possible to be.

While you bring your hands up and put your palms together, breathe in and out mindfully. Your two hands form a flower, a lotus bud. If you do this with genuine intention, you will likely be able to see the possibilities in the other person. As you breathe, you may want to say silently: A lotus for you. A Buddha to be.

It may not be appropriate in your life or workplace for you to join your palms to everyone you see, but you can still look them in the eye. As you smile, or say hello, or shake hands, in your mind you can still be offering them a lotus flower, a reminder of the Buddha nature in both of you.

There are two keys to effective and true communication. The first is deep listening. The second is loving speech. Deep listening and loving speech are the best instruments I know for establishing and restoring communication with others and relieving suffering.

When we listen to someone with the intention of helping that person suffer less, this is deep listening. When we listen with compassion, we don’t get caught in judgment. A judgment may form, but we don’t hold on to it. Deep listening has the power to help us create a moment of joy, a moment of happiness, and to help us handle a painful emotion.

It is okay if you’re not ready to listen at a certain moment. If the quality of your listening is not good enough, it’s better to pause and continue another day; don’t push yourself too hard. Practice mindful breathing and mindful walking until you’re ready to really listen to the other person. You can say, “I want to listen to you when I’m at my best. Would it be all right if we continued tomorrow?”

You have to take the time to look and see the suffering in the other person. You must be prepared. Deep listening has only one purpose: to help others suffer less. Even if the person says wrong things, expresses bitterness, or blames, continue to listen compassionately for as long as you can. You may want to say this to yourself as a reminder: I am listening to this person with only one purpose: to give this person a chance to suffer less.

The foundation of love is understanding, and that means first of all understanding suffering.

I define happiness as the capacity to understand and to love, because without understanding and love no happiness could be possible. We don’t have enough understanding and love, which is why we suffer so much. That is what we are thirsting for.

If you live with a family member, a romantic partner, or a friend, you may think that because you see this person every day you know a lot about him or her. But that’s not correct. You know only a little about that person. You may have lived with someone for five, ten, or twenty years. But you may not have looked deeply into that person to understand him or her.

In Buddhism another way of saying loving speech is Right Speech. In our daily life, Right Speech is what nourishes us and nourishes those around us.

Enlightenment is always enlightenment about something. If you begin to understand the nature and the root of your suffering, that is a kind of enlightenment, and it helps you suffer less right away. There are those of us who are very critical of ourselves. That’s because we haven’t understood our own suffering. When we become a bodhisattva for ourselves, we don’t blame ourselves or others anymore.

Here are the four bodhisattva guidelines of the Ten Bodhisattva Trainings for Right Speech: 1. Tell the truth. Don’t lie or turn the truth upside down. 2. Don’t exaggerate. 3. Be consistent. This means no double-talk: speaking about something in one way to one person and in an opposite way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons. 4. Use peaceful language. Don’t use insulting or violent words, cruel speech, verbal abuse, or condemnation.

The truth is a solid base for a long-lasting relationship. If you don’t build your relationship on the truth, sooner or later it will crumble. We have to find the best way to tell the truth so that the other person can receive it easily. Sometimes even the most skillful words can cause pain. That is okay. Pain can heal. If your words are spoken with compassion and understanding, the pain will heal more quickly.

Suffering can be beneficial. There can be goodness in suffering, but we don’t want to make the other person suffer needlessly. We can minimize the shock and the pain. We try to convey the truth in such a way that other people can hear us without suffering too much.

These four criteria are helpful today in evaluating whether we and others are using Right Speech and speaking the truth effectively. The four criteria are: 1. We have to speak the language of the world. 2. We may speak differently to different people, in a way that reflects how they think and their ability to receive the teaching. 3. We give the right teaching according to person, time, and place, just as a doctor prescribes the right medicine. 4. We teach in a way that reflects the absolute truth.

The fourth criterion is the absolute truth, the most profound view of things, and it may be found in sentences such as “There is no separate self” or “There is no such thing as birth and death.” The absolute truth is correct; it is the closest thing to a description of the ultimate reality, but it can make people feel lost if they haven’t had a spiritual teacher who could skillfully convey its depths to them, in a way they could take in. So whenever we need to say something we know will be difficult for others to hear, we have to be humble and try to look more and more deeply to discover in what way we can talk about these things.

The first mantra is: “I am here for you.” This is the best gift you can give a loved one. Nothing is more precious than your presence.

The second mantra is: “I know you are there, and I am very happy.” You are letting your loved one know that his or her presence is important to your happiness.

“I know you are there, and I am very happy.” The second mantra is to reaffirm the presence of the other person as someone very important to you. The second mantra, like the first, only works if you breathe in and out before saying it. Imagine the other person is not there; he or she has moved away or passed on. You might feel a big hole. Right now that person is alive and near you, so you’re very lucky. That’s why you have to practice the second mantra to remind yourself of the gift of that person’s presence.

While the first two mantras can be said several times a day, no matter what the situation, the third mantra is used when you notice that the other person is suffering. The third mantra can help the other person suffer less right away. The third mantra is: “I know you suffer, and that is why I am here for you.”

Thanks to your mindfulness, you know that something is not going well with your friend or loved one. When your loved one is suffering, your impulse may be to want to do something to fix it, but you don’t need to do much. You just need to be there for him or her. That is true love. True love is made of mindfulness.

The fourth mantra is a little more difficult, especially for those of us with a lot of pride. You use the fourth mantra when you suffer and you believe that the other person has caused your suffering. This happens from time to time. If it was someone you didn’t care as much about who had said or done that to you, you would have suffered less. But when someone you love says something that feels critical or dismissive, you suffer deeply. If we suffer, and we don’t look deeply into our suffering and find compassion for ourselves and the other person, we may want to punish the person who hurt us because he or she has dared to make us suffer. When we suffer, we think it’s the other person’s fault for not appreciating us enough or loving us enough. Many of us have a natural tendency to want to punish the other person. One way we think of punishing the other person is to show that we can survive without him or her. Many of us have made this mistake. I myself have also made that mistake. But we learn. We want to show the other person that without him or her we can survive very well. This is an indirect way of saying, “I don’t need you.” But that’s not true. In fact when we suffer, we need others. When we suffer, we should tell others that we suffer and that we need their help. We usually do the opposite. We don’t want to go and ask for help. That’s why we need the fourth mantra: “I suffer, please help.” It’s so simple, and it’s also a little bit difficult. But if you can bring you...