If you want to send an e-mail or call someone on the phone, you might want to recite the following verse to yourself before you begin to type or to dial the number:

  Words can travel thousands of miles.

  May my words create mutual understanding and love.

  May they be as beautiful as gems,

  as lovely as flowers.

  Mindful Meetings

  Our communication in meetings can often be a source of tension, stress, and conflict at work. Sometimes we rush from one meeting to another, so we arrive already anxious or distracted.

  It will help to schedule a few minutes at the beginning of any meeting to sit quietly together. If people in your workplace are open to having a bell sound before the meeting begins, that sound can help everyone come back to their breathing and find some calm. If people don’t want to start the meeting by sitting together quietly for a few moments, you can still arrive at the meeting a few minutes early so you have time to relax and breathe mindfully. Perhaps other people will see your example and join you the next time. You don’t need to say anything or make a point of letting others know you’re doing this. Just do it and enjoy the benefit it brings you.

  It can be helpful in setting the tone of a meeting to open with a spoken agreement that the participants will respect each other’s words and be open to the views of others. If we try to impose our views on others, we only create tension and suffering at work. So in any meeting, practice being open and listening to the experience and insight of others.

  If you have a wonderful idea and are eager to share it, that’s good, but you shouldn’t be so eager to share your ideas that you drown out the ideas of others. Invite everybody to express their ideas. Trust that the best ideas will emerge from this process as collective wisdom.

  During the meeting, practice using loving speech and deep listening. Follow your breathing as you listen. Let one person speak at a time, without interruption. Don’t get caught up in verbal duels. Speak from your own experience, and address the whole group whenever you talk. If you have questions or concerns, place them in the center of the circle for the whole group to contemplate and address. This may be challenging; it is likely a new culture for conducting meetings, one that is different from the way meetings have been run in the past. You don’t have to try to change the culture all at once. If everyone agrees to listen mindfully and without interruption, that is wonderful. But even if it’s only you who follows these guidelines and makes a commitment to speak and listen with compassion, it will have a positive effect.

  Creating Community at Work

  If you’re modeling compassionate communication at work, soon others may be interested in practicing mindful breathing, sitting, and walking with you. If you’re surrounded by people who are practicing mindfulness together, you’ll all be supported by the collective energy, and mindful speech and deep listening will come much more easily.

  The more you practice mindfulness, the more you’ll see things you can do to change your work environment in a positive way. When we practice mindful speech and deep listening, our way of communicating becomes a bell of mindfulness for everyone. When you walk mindfully, enjoying every step you take, this encourages others to do the same, even if they don’t know that you’re practicing mindfulness. When you smile, your smile supports everyone around you and also reminds others to smile. When you practice, your presence has a positive effect on you and those around you.

  A Rock in the River

  All of us have difficulties at work sometimes. We all have our own pain, sorrows, and fears. Often at work we don’t give ourselves time or space to recognize and embrace these strong emotions, so our tension comes out in unintentional ways. This can make communication difficult.

  But none of us needs to embrace pain and sorrow alone. When you throw a rock into a river, no matter how small the rock is, it will sink to the bottom of the river. But if you have a boat, you can carry many tons of rocks, and they won’t sink. The same is true of our suffering. Our sorrow, fear, worries, and pain are like rocks that can be carried by the boat of mindfulness. If we give ourselves the time and space to embrace and recognize the suffering, we won’t sink into the ocean of anger, worries, or sorrow. We become lighter.

  We can practice mindfulness alone, but we can find more ease and joy if we can bring mindful communication into our work environments and have the support of others who are practicing mindfulness with us. Don’t expect to change your work environment overnight. But if you make a diligent effort to practice compassionate communication, both with yourself and with your colleagues, you’re taking steps in the right direction, and that is good enough.

  7

  Creating Community in the World

  As powerful as compassionate communication can be when we use it in our individual relationships, its power is magnified when we bring it to our communities. Both communication and community have the same Latin root, communicare, meaning to impart, share, or make common. We need to go in the direction of reconciliation and understanding, not just with our friends and family, but in our neighborhoods and workplaces. We can create an inclusive, compassionate foundation as the basis from which we interact with everyone.

  A community that is committed to mindful speech and deep listening can be very effective in making society better. These two practices could be part of a global ethic that would be available to people of any culture or religious tradition to reduce conflict and restore communication.

  Community Creates Change

  We can speak of our practice in terms of energy because mindfulness is a kind of energy. When we bring our energies together, they are increased a thousandfold. The whole can be much, much greater than the sum of its parts. Systematic change can’t be achieved without the energy of community. If you want to save the planet, if you want to transform society, you need a strong community. Technology is not enough. Without mindfulness, technology can be more destructive than constructive. When we speak about creating a sustainable environment or a more just society, we usually speak of physical action or technological advances as the means to achieve these goals. But we forget about the element of a connected community. Without that, we can’t do anything at all.

  Usually we think of communal action in terms of physical acts, but the energy of a shared meditative silence or communal chanting is also communication and a powerful kind of action. I don’t think of this concentration so much as prayer or a religious rite, but rather as a form of communication. When we sit and concentrate as a community, we create a collective energy that has compassion and awakened understanding in it. Sitting together in silence can be a practice of listening to our own suffering and the suffering of the world.

  The collective energy of mindfulness also supports our individual practice. When we see other people who are in good communication with themselves and others, they inspire us. Sometimes the cause of our sorrow is hidden by so many layers of suffering that we can’t penetrate it by ourselves, even when we practice diligently and sit mindfully. In these cases, the energy of a community of mindfulness can help us embrace and release suffering that we could not reach by ourselves. If we open our hearts, the collective energy of the community can penetrate the suffering inside us. Mindful listening and speaking will make it easier for us to build a stronger community.

  Building Trust and Sharing Suffering

  Some of us do not easily trust another person. For such a person, it can be difficult to imagine sharing with a larger community. We may be a little bit wary or even very suspicious. People say they love us and understand us, but we haven’t really experienced that love and understanding. We should be able to find ways to help a person who doesn’t have the capacity to receive love and understanding. Sometimes there is real love, there is real understanding, but the person doesn’t believe in love and understanding, and that’s why he has never been able to receive it. That person is like a hungry ghost. In Buddhism, a “hungry ghost” is someone who has a big, empty stomach and is very hungry but has a very tiny throat. Even if there’s plenty of food, that person can’t swallow it. He can’t absorb anything. So even if a lot of understanding and love is offered, that person isn’t able to take it in.

  A person who suffers like that has no capacity to receive understanding, love, and help. You have to be very patient. From time to time we see hungry ghosts like that walking around, and we can recognize them easily. They look very alone and cut off. We have to be very patient and allow them a lot of time and space. Don’t be too eager to help, because when you’re too eager to help, you may have the opposite effect from what you intended, and you may get an opposite response.

  Remain fresh, loving, compassionate, and spacious for them. That is what you can do now. Look deeply to see if you can find a mantra to say that’s skillful enough to help them enlarge their throats and get nourishment. With patience and time, one day their throats will be larger, and they will begin to notice the energy of love and understanding that is in you. Community building takes time.

  Community Strengthens Compassion

  Scientists have studied the behavior of social animals, such as birds and fish, and have found that in every community there is an element of altruism; some members of the community are ready to die and sacrifice their lives for the sake of the community.

  There is a kind of fish called a stickleback. They swim in bands, thousands of them. Whenever they notice the shadow of a predator, a large fish that might threaten the band of fish, a few dozen will detach themselves and go explore. They know there’s a risk, but they want to go in that direction to see if the threat is real. If they find there’s no risk, they go back and rejoin the band of fish. If there is a real danger, a few of them will stay to be swallowed by the big fish while the rest go back and tell the band of fish to go in another direction. Ants also behave like that, as do bees and some kinds of birds. We humans also hear news reports of heroes sacrificing themselves in this way.

  This behavior on the part of some members of your community nourishes your own generosity and altruism. Scientists in this fish study found that if a school stays together, the generosity will grow. The descendants will profit and become more and more generous. But if they are dispersed, the generosity dies down very quickly.

  According to scientists who have conducted studies, when you’re exposed to such behavior from some members of your community, the seed of altruism in you is watered. And when your turn comes, you will do the same—you will know how to sacrifice for the sake of the community.

  Living in the world, we have strong habits. We walk without any awareness or enjoyment of our steps. We walk as if we have to run. We speak but don’t know what we are saying; we create a lot of suffering while speaking. Communities that commit themselves to mindfulness can help members of the community learn how to speak, breathe, and walk mindfully. The community helps train you, and you train yourself.

  When we practice in a community, there are more people to support us but also more opportunities for frustration and anger. Loving speech and deep listening are key to community building. You learn to speak in a way that will not cause suffering in yourself and your community. If your community doesn’t practice this, it’s not an authentic community. Even if you have suffering and anger, you can train yourself to speak in a way that helps the other person or group understand what is going on in you, and that makes real communication possible.

  Our World Can Be a Mindful, Compassionate Community

  We need to find better ways to communicate. If we can do this in our relationships, we can do it in our work environments, and even in our political environments. We have to transform our governments into mindful, compassionate places of deep listening and loving speech. We each can do our part to contribute as a citizen, as a member of the human family. In the process of community building we get the transformation and healing we need to further the transformation and healing of the world.

  This is a process of training and learning. When you speak, allow the insight of our collective humanity to speak through you. When you walk, don’t walk for yourself alone; walk for your ancestors and your community. When you breathe, allow the larger world to breathe for you. When you’re angry, allow your anger to be released and to be embraced by the larger community. If you know how to do this for one day, you are already transformed. Be your community and let your community be you. This is true practice. Be like the river when it arrives at the ocean; be like the bees and birds that fly together. See yourself in the community and see the community in you. This is a process of transforming your way of seeing, and it will transform how, and how effectively, you communicate.

  8

  Our Communication Is Our Continuation

  Every human and every animal communicates. We typically think of communication as the words we use when we speak or write, but our body language, our facial expressions, our tone of voice, our physical actions, and even our thoughts are ways of communicating.

  Just as an orange tree can produce beautiful orange leaves, blossoms, and fruits, a beautiful human being can produce beautiful thoughts, speech, and actions. Our communication is not neutral. Every time we communicate, we either produce more compassion, love, and harmony or we produce more suffering and violence.

  Our communication is what we put out into the world and what remains after we have left it. In this way, our communication is our karma. The Sanskrit word karma means “action,” and it refers not just to bodily action but to what we express with our bodies, our words, and our thoughts and intentions.

  Throughout our day, we produce energies of thought, speech, and action. We’re communicating in every moment, either with ourselves or with others. Thinking, speech, and bodily acts are our own manifestations. You are your action. You are what you do, not only what you do with your body, but also with your words and your mind. Karma is the triple action of our thoughts, our speech, and our bodily actions.

  Thinking is already action. Even if you don’t see its manifestation, it is there as powerful energy. Thinking can push you to do or say things that are destructive, or it can create a lot of love. Every thought will bring a fruit, sometimes right away, sometimes later on. When you produce a thought of hate, anger, or despair, that thought is a poison which will affect your body and your mind. A thought of hatred or anger can lead one person to hurt another. If you commit a violent act, it means you’ve been producing thoughts of hatred, anger, and the desire to punish. So thinking is already acting. You don’t need to say or do anything in order to be acting. To produce a thought is to act.

  When you produce a thought that is full of understanding, forgiveness, and compassion, that thought will immediately have a healing effect on both your physical and mental health and on those around you. If you think a thought that is full of judgment and anger, that thought will immediately poison your body and mind and the people around you.

  Thinking is the first kind of action, because our thinking is the basis for how we affect the world. Our speaking also has a huge effect. If we’re capable of speaking and writing with compassion and understanding, we feel wonderful in our bodies and in our minds. We don’t speak with compassion just so that the person or people we’re speaking to will feel better! Our compassionate speech has a healing effect on us too. After you have been able to say something kind, forgiving, and compassionate, you feel much better.

  When you write words full of compassion and forgiveness, you feel freer, even if the person you’re writing to hasn’t read them yet. Even before you mail the letter or send the e-mail or text, you feel better. The person reading your words will also feel your compassion. In the same way, if you speak with anger and violence, if you speak out of a desire to punish, both you and the people who hear your words experience more suffering. Think of a child hearing her parents fighting. Even if the words are not directed at her, the effect of the angry speech is much the same. Speech, the second form of action, can heal and liberate, or it can cause destruction and pain.

  The third form of action is bodily action. We communicate with our body language (our clenched fists or open arms), but also with our larger actions (including what we choose to show up for, what we do with our day, and how we treat others). If you are able to do something in the line of saving, supporting, protecting, comforting, rescuing, or caring, there is a positive effect right away.

  Every Communication Bears Our Signature

  Everything we say and do bears our signature. We can’t say, “That’s not my thought.” We’re responsible for our own communication. So if it happens that yesterday I said something that wasn’t right, I have to do something today to transform it. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, “Man is the sum of all his actions.” The value of our lives depends on the quality of our thinking, our speech, and our action.

  We want to offer the best kind of thinking, the best kind of speech, and the best kind of bodily acts, because those actions are our continuation. When we think, when we speak, when we act, we create, and we are there in our creations. That is the outcome of our being. Our communications will not be lost when our physical bodies are no longer here. The effect of our thinking, speech, and physical actions will continue to ripple outward into the cosmos. Whether this body is still here or has disintegrated, our actions continue.

  When you produce a thought, it bears your signature. It’s you who produced that thought, and you are responsible for it. If it’s a thought of compassion, forgiveness, nondiscrimination, you will continue beautifully, because you are there in it. You are the author of that action. Your speech and your physical actions, both compassionate and violent, also bear your signature.