The Lost Art of Good Conversation Quotes

“Beginning a conversation is an act of bravery. When you initiate a conversation, you fearlessly step into the unknown. Will the other person respond to favorably or unfavorably? Will it be a friendly or hostile exchange? There is a feeling of being on the edge. That nanosecond of space and unknowing can be intimidating. It shows your vulnerability. You don't know what is going to happen. You feel quite exposed. There's a chance you'll experience embarrassment. Yet this very feeling is what allows you to connect to the other person.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“In the tradition of warriorship, to celebrate moment to moment is called discipline. Discipline is not a sense of oppression or being punished; it is freedom from our own self-perpetuating laziness.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“Art brings beauty and meaning into our lives. Beauty is a sense of totality, or wholeness.
It has been said that a dark age is characterized by mass anmesia, in which our consciousness thickens and we forget our art. Then, after a while, we even forget what has been lost.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“From a meditative point of you, the art of conversation is an engagement in mindfulness and, therefore, being present. Mindfulness is the act of noticing. It is not engaging in like or dislike; it is paying attention to being alive. Mindfulness begins with awareness of feeling.
In Hinayana Buddhism, good conversation is right speech: not lying, not slandering, not causing disharmony, not gossiping.
In Mahayana Buddhism it is the open heart and open mind that comes from the way we consider how others feel.
From a Tantric perspective, good conversation is expressing the Mandela principle, where everything is interrelated in a total vision of reality. Just as we are connected to the elements — Wind, water, earth, fire— we are inextricably linked to other people.
From the Confucian point of view, good conversation is engaging in social harmony: balancing Yin and Yang.
From the Taoist perspective, it is engaging in the Way, which increases longevity. In terms of civility, it is demonstrating good decorum and manners.
In the warrior tradition of Shambala, conversation is related to wind horse. Wind is the notion of movement, energy, and expanse. Horse is the notion of riding that energy. The image of wind horse represents being brave and connecting to the inherent power of life. Good conversation is knowing what to except and with reject, and engaging with kindness and compassion, which are the seeds of happiness because they take us beyond our self.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“We all need someone to talk to. It’s easy to become isolated. The conversation is based on physical presence, which is rooted in feeling. All our senses are involved. By talking to someone in person we can access to specific senses: appreciation compassion, and love. These are the feelings that connect human beings to reality, which stimulates our intuition and awareness. If we become conditioned to the computer, then we become one dimensional. We are less deep as individuals and more shallow, predictable, anxiety ridden, and irritable. By not having conversations, we are forgetting how to feel.
These days some of us avoid conversation altogether because it requires too much attention. We’re accustomed to being distracted and we forget how to focus, so we have trouble listening. We may not have time; we are so busy with school and responsibilities at work or at home. We made the conversation as a superfluous social gesture. And some of us don’t know how to talk to people because we’ve never been taught.
At the same time, we’ve become more individualistic an opinionated. Because we want something stable that makes sense in the world, we hold onto themes and ideas that are grounding and meaningful. This fixation crates factionalism and polarity. Identifying strongly with our thoughts and emotions, we mistake them for a solid “me”, and then defend that apparition against the world. Yet by having fewer face-to-face conversations, we are simultaneously disempowering the very source that can delegate our identity: our relationship with other people.”
― Sakyong Mipham , The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“However, especially in an age of coarsening values, it is hard to feel our natural kindness because it is often blocked by reactionary emotions. This occurs when we divide the world into us versus them. Then the more we forget our kindness, the more unkindness there is, and the more we forget.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life

“Speech can be reactionary or it can create initiative. This dynamic exists in life, too. Our experience of words is largely based on our communal culture and what realities seem important at the time. At present our society is in danger of creating a reactionary story of fear, hate, and aggression.”
― Sakyong Mipham, The Lost Art of Good Conversation: A Mindful Way to Connect with Others and Enrich Everyday Life