TLDR: Ever had a deep conversation when time flew by and you connected wholeheartedly with your confidante? Oddly, time froze and you were fully present. How can we create conditions for such conversations to occur?
The Challenge:
Alas, why is a heartfelt conversation hard in the first place? These days, our attention span has been altered crazily by social media. Instagram Reels & Tik Tok reward our brains with shots of dopamine whenever we get a comment or like. Groovy music or snappy videos serve us a fresh shot every day.
It is no wonder a deep conversation is hard to come by — a social treasure waiting to be discovered. We can learn to steer conversations deeper rather than staring at our screens.
Here are four subtle ways to create deeper conversations within your social circles or even Dhamma youth groups! These are methods borrowed from people wiser than me!
1. Ask Better Questions
We were taught to avoid the ‘weather talk’, to avoid politics, and religion (sharing Dhamma anyone?). Does this mean we talk about neutral and bland topics?
Tim Ferris, an American entrepreneur who does awesome podcasts about self-growth, begs to differ. He interviews people from all walks of life and asks them deep questions that seem superficial.
Those simple questions lead to deep lessons and conversations with the individual. Questions like ‘How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure’ of yours?’ or ‘In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?’ or ‘What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why?’
Why are these questions ‘better’?
These questions are not too broad (e.g. ‘how are you doing?’), which makes the speaker reach out for an equally broad answer like ‘Been busy’ or ‘Been fine’. They are also not too piercingly direct, which erodes the conversation’s psychological safety (e.g. ‘How has your marriage failure affected you?’).
Tim’s questions give guardrails for the speaker to reply and also the space to steer the question into comfortable grounds.
This process boils down to the quality of empathy – the ability to think from that person’s perspective and find a middle ground question that makes them feel safe and open.
Tying these questions to the person’s most recent happenings can help you add flavour to your soup of questions. Context matters! For example, if it is a festive season such as Vesak Day or Christmas, you might want to phrase the ‘book’ question (mentioned above) as ‘Oh Vesak/Christmas is coming up. What books would you recommend giving people in the spirit of this giving season?’
Contextualising our questions nudges us towards having a true interest in the other and avoids the ‘risk’ of creating a checklist conversation.
2. Make writers, not witnesses
It is never about what happened to anyone we speak to. How they experience their lives is what makes the conversation insightful. Asking better questions is just one part of the puzzle; making your speakers do more than a recitation of their week is another.
Use open-ended questions like ‘How was it like to be the first…’ or ‘How did you manage to cope with…’ to keep the conversation centred on your speaker. Follow up on their stories by asking your friends or family members about their perspective of the event in retrospect.
This conversation technique gives the person an opportunity to add a new layer of emotion and even transform that pain into a lesson of wisdom and love. The conversation then allows them to write and rewrite their experiences.
3. Don’t fear pauses
If we are listening to respond rather than to understand our speakers, we can be afraid of silent pauses. Pauses can be dreadful in a conversation where we talk to impress. When we are unable to elucidate a response at that moment, we fear that we may have just said junk.
If we perceive pauses as mindful breaks to settle back in the present moment, we give ourselves time to internalise what has been discussed.
There is no rush. There is nowhere else to be.
What can help us through pauses, is to dig deeper into what has been discussed. One can use phrases like ‘Oh yes, you mention that xxx means xxx for you. What brings you to that conclusion?’.
These questions help to replace our fear of pauses with curiosity about a person’s stance on different topics. Our focus shifts from ‘I have to say something smart’ to ‘Oh wow, what led this person to think this way’. When we have that level of curiosity, our fear of silence diminishes.
4. Smile at disagreements
The opposite of silence, some might argue, is disagreement. People can disagree on topics that are personal to you. The other may say Buddhists are just ‘idol worshippers‘ or ‘Meditation is useless’. What do you do?
That is where the mindfulness & metta practice gets into play. We acknowledge that there is a disagreement and then find ways to understand how that person arrived at his/her/their evaluation.
Remember, once you see yourself or your identity as under attack, you arrive at suffering-land.
Hence, it is critical to remain calm when your opinions are challenged. It is okay to say ‘I am not comfortable discussing that right now’ rather than to engage in a battle of shouting views.
Adar Cohen, a renowned mediator, brings the term ‘gem-statements’ into the art of conversation. When both parties have done their best to listen and be empathetic, someone unearths the priceless gem. It is usually one to two short and powerful statements. The statements should be a genuine expression of your feelings and have a strong, positive, and meaningful impact on the other person.
These are some gem-statements that you can bring to your next ‘disagreement’:
‘We kept on fighting because none of us is willing to walk away from this friendship. That’s something.’
‘Even when we can’t agree on how to take care (of your) uncle’s health, I’ve never doubted your good intentions. I know you want the best for him’
This gem-statement lights the way around a compromise or towards a solution.
Deeper Conversations ahead!
There are way more subtle ways to have deeper conversations than the four tips highlighted here. However, grasping these four methods right will help you to get started in becoming a subtly deep conversationalist. May you find that deep moment of clarity and precious insights in your next conversations.
Wise steps:
Better questions are crucial in starting conversations, memorise some of them and try them next time
Remember ‘Writers & not witnesses’, get someone to share their emotions and experiences and not the key points of their event
Don’t be afraid of pauses in your conversations. Treat them as a mindful pause to recollect and refill your empathy jar
Find gem-statements, one to two empathetic and impactful lines, in difficult conversations. Be ready to walk away if it is too much!
TLDR: Active listening has become rare in the social media world. Being genuinely curious and asking the right questions can make you a better listener. How to know if you are becoming a better one? Kopi cups will be your guide!
It is not a pleasant experience; someone is deaf to what you are saying. Hearing the reply “my dad also passed away recently too” to your sharing of loss is cold comfort. As cold as a kopi you forgot about after making it. It ain’t pleasant.
We are sometimes guilty of being the inactive listener and other times, the receiving end of it.
How can looking at Kopi cups tell you if you are becoming a better listener? Before we get there, we have to understand what is active listening and how to get better at it.
Active Listening: What is It?
Active listening often refers to a way of listening that keeps you engaged in the conversation positively.
It requires listening attentively while someone speaks and reflecting on what is said, without jumping into advice and judgment.
Put simply, it has two main components:
Shutting up to listen and not give advice
Recognising you don’t know everything about the person
Naomi Henderson, the suffragist, summarises:
“The real secret to listening I’ve learned is that it’s not about me…I’m holding my cup out in front of me. I want to fill my cup and not pour anything in their cup”
Active Listening: What It is Not
It’s easy to get complacent about how well we know our friends. It is hard not to make assumptions about strangers based on stereotypes.
Assumptions quickly become our earplugs. It makes us inactive listeners as we listen through a stained filter.
Kate Murphy, the author of ‘You’re Not Listening’, argues that listening has become a scarce skill in the age of social media. Social media is not designed for how real communication works. We do not show friends a picture of our Laksa before asking them a question. The extreme focus of broadcasting ourselves has made us deaf to what others say and need.
So…am I an inactive listener?
If you answer “Yes” at least once, you might be having a cupful of inactive listening episodes.
ListeningAudit:
Recently, have you found yourself saying…
I feel you, I also….
Oh wait, we aren’t talking about X already? Whoops, sorry I am blur
I think that you should… (replying with solutions instead of empathy)
I hear you BUT…
Don’t you think that (inserts your assumption)
Now that you have done an honest audit, what are the benefits of listening?
Why Listen?
1. It makes you stand out positively
“If you want to really stand out in today’s world, stop talking about yourself and learn to hear what others are saying.” Kate Murphy.
It shows to people that you truly care, something rare today. A 2018 survey found that 46% of Americans said they did not have meaningful in-person social interactions.
How does being more outstanding look like?
“When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.” Jennie Jerome (Winston Churchill’s mother)
Jennie spent an evening with two politicians. Disraeli stood out. Disraeli spent the evening asking questions and listening attentively to her responses.
He wanted to know everything about her and steered the conversation consciously towards her.
Naturally, Jennie felt good talking about herself. (Just like everyone else). Disraeli, who stood out amongst his peers through active listening, became the future PM of the UK while Gladstone handsomely lost the contest.
2. It helps you empathise better in a noisy world
With deep listening, we give our attention and energy to others. To listen is to let go of the self and be fully present for others, even when they are expressing strong feelings.
If we want to help a friend who is suffering, the best we can do is give them space. Space to share, cry and think.
When someone asked the Buddha for help or questions he did not say “That’s what happened to me before I became enlightened, it’s annoying yea?” He sat and heard what they needed to say and did not respond until they had finished.
Buddha was always uber busy attending to monks, nuns, kings, and merchants. However, if he could sit patiently and listen to questions, we have little excuse to not strive to achieve a small cupful of his empathy.
(Fun fact: Buddha was a busy person who slept at 2 am and woke up at 4 am to start teaching for 45 years)
In a world where there are noisy broadcasts of self-promotion, we can swim against the stream. We can empathise and listen.
2 Ways We Can Be Better At Listening.
1. Be curious about people
PM Disraeli had a strong curiosity about people. Before engaging in your next conversation, come up with a list of questions to train your curiosity muscles.
You can kopi-cat (copycat) Tim Feriss’ questions. A renowned writer, Tim asks his interviewees questions like: “In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?”.
Notice how it focuses strongly on the individual and not on random news/topics?
If this is too much to try with strangers, try it with close relatives or friends. You may get to know them deeper than before. Keep your focus on asking people about themselves. You don’t have to say a lot.
You just need to be asking the right questions.
Armed with the questions, ensure that your questions are an invitation to a conversation and not a question checklist to be completed.
2. Ask the right questions
Having built curiosity about everyone you meet, how can we ask the right questions? Charles Deber says there are two responses we can offer in every conversation. Here are two examples of Shift vs Support responses.
While ‘shift’ responses make you feel that you are connecting with their situation, it doesn’t help the other person feel better.
In the case of your friend not feeling well, we’d respond with sympathy and ask a question. You might try asking what they are planning to do now.
The key to getting these right is to ask questions that get people to explain their situation in greater detail.
You might try a follow-up about a specific aspect that you don’t understand or want to know more about.
How Do We Know We Are Improving As Listeners?
The Kopi Test:
The next time you are eating with friends who eat at a normal pace, try this. If your cup is first to empty and you didn’t rush your meal, you are most probably listening. When you are busy drinking, you have more time to listen.
If your kopi cup is full while everyone’s cup is empty, try harder next time to listen more.
Compliments:
The second way is straightforward. When someone tells you are a great listener. That’s better than looking at kopi cups. The feeling of connection after a good conversation and the genuine smiles exchanged is a great testament to your listening skills.
May the next time your eyes catch a kopi cup remind you to listen more and talk less. *sips*
Wise Steps:
Look at kopi cups to see if you finished slower than your friends, it may mean you need to improve on your listening
Be genuinely curious about people, ask them for more details of their lives
Focus on ‘support’ responses and reduce ‘shift’ responses, it is a gamechanger
TLDR: Although we view others and ourselves as acting and speaking independently from one another, all of our speech and action are our own projections. Others are a mirror of our state of consciousness.
This is a reflection piece as contemplated by the author based on the Buddha’s teachings. As such, it may not contain the truths as taught by the Buddha. The author hopes the reader takes away useful bits that may resonate and discard whatever parts that make no sense without any aversion.
In Buddhist psychology, the Buddha gave an insight into how we ordinarily experience the world. We are sense based beings and we experience our world through the six senses. They are – the senses of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, touch and mind. The mind is a sense base object because it comes into contact with the world of ideas dependent on the other senses. Mind in western psychology is the physical brain. It makes sense because the brain receives signals from the other sense bases to create an idea. However, the mind in Buddhism has been translated as awareness and consciousness. The translators of Theravada Buddhist suttas used the word, ‘citta’ in Pali. The word citta includes the mind and the heart. The Buddha did not point to the brain specifically as the mind. He was pointing for us to look at our consciousness. The function of consciousness is a state of knowing and in the teaching of the five aggregates, it seems that consciousness has been intertwined with the sense bases.
How We View Our World
In our ordinary perception of the world, we come into contact with people and the environment. When it comes to our interaction with others, we sometimes think that other people make assumptions about us. We also think we are accurate accessors of other people’s needs and thoughts, and therefore they may need our opinions. In this way, we often come away in frustrations communicating with the vast majority of people who do not listen to us, just as we do not listen to them.
Although we think that whatever action or words we perceive is made independently by each individual, if we look close enough, what we see, hear, touch, smell or think in the world is but a mirror of ourselves.
We Cannot Perceive What We Don’t Know
Ayya Khema, a well-known German Buddhist nun who taught in the late 20th century, said we cannot see in another person what we don’t know or do not have within us. For example, when we see another person angry, we can see it is anger and something we dislike. That is because we know anger and we have it in us, and so we react to the person who is angry.
We understand mundane affection, and so we see it as love and something permanent. She said we would not understand what we do not have. The unconditional love of an arahant is hard to understand and we wouldn’t know even if we stand next to him or her. That is because it is something we do not understand as we do not have unconditional love in us. We may only be able to perceive an arahant as quiet and reserved instead of lovable because we don’t know what unconditional love is. An arahant is someone who attained enlightenment in Buddhism. You can also call an arahant a saint.
Our Daily Interaction With Others
Thinking about what Ayya Khema taught, it occurred to me that this happens all the time. Our interaction with others is always about ourselves because we can only talk about and react to what is within us.
For example, I was at a dinner with friends at one of their homes. This friend is a vegetarian, she does yoga and enjoys studying Buddhism. In my mind, she seemed to enjoy clean living. But she revealed that she still smokes, though only socially. I gave a look of surprise. She remarked that smoking isn’t a bad thing and does not make one a bad person. I was surprised she said that. That is because I never thought smoking makes anyone a bad person.
Earlier on, I had also encouraged the group of friends to practice what they learnt as opposed to mainly studying. However, instead of seeing it as a form of encouragement, they thought I was disparaging their form of practice. So you see, they said I was disparaging because they could not see or understand my sharing of the experience of spiritual practice. I, on the other hand, could not see or understand the pleasant experience they gained from intellectualising spiritual texts instead of probing it in real life. We simply were projecting onto each other what we know rather than speaking each other’s language.
In another example, my helper had been unwell with allergic rhinitis for sometime. Despite medicine from the general practitioner, she did not recover. She also did not want to consistently take the supplements I offered or accept my offer to bring her to a Chinese doctor. Again, I could not see or know her world and so out of frustration I made a comment that she is always sick. Right after making that comment, I realised I was seeing in her what I dislike – being sick. I was also saying only what I know in my world to her – being sick is not a good thing. I regretted my comment immediately upon realising what I had done as I seemed to be blaming her for being sick when it is normal to be ill.
Listening Is Better Than Speaking
These daily episodes made me realise that most of our interaction seems to be a futile business. We are always talking about what we know and consistently projecting ourselves onto another person. There seems not to be any useful speech except for sharing the dhamma and interaction for the purpose of completing tasks at work.
Listening is indeed better than talking. When we think, we think from our vantage point. When we speak, we push onto others only what we know within us and not what the other person needs.
Another thing that struck me is, we can really only be mindful when we pay attention even when speaking. I have not been totally successful in using speech as an object of mindfulness. When I managed to do it for a while, I saw that whatever that came out of my mouth is about myself. Other than that, I found that ordinary speech is a form of entertainment so that we can let the mind loose and rattle on. Ayya Khema also pointed out that only when we have let go of ill will or greed, then we will not react to others. That is because we do not have these tendencies in us anymore to recognise them in others.
Being with others can help us realise many things about the nature of our consciousness taught by the Buddha and his Sangha. When we can see the state of our consciousness, can we purify it by letting go of what makes us discontented and unhappy?
Wise Steps:
Experiment with the inanimate objects around you without labeling to find out how it changes your reaction.
Observe what you say and how you act in communication with others. Are the words you say truly what the other person wants to hear or is it just about you?
Instead of chiming in with your opinions, try to listen more and see if the interaction with others changes from your usual communication with them.
