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
Wholesome Wednesdays: Bringing you curated positive content on Wednesdays to uplift your hump day.
Two wholesome content for you today!
We explore a ‘critique’ of meditation in secular settings and how we can break out of our comparing loop.
Meditation & mindfulness makes you more selfish? Really?
Cr: Unsplash
What’s going on here
CNA Article covers how mindfulness in secular settings can possibly lead to heightened levels of selfishness and independent-minded thinking. The take-home message? Mindfulness could lead to good social outcomes or bad ones, depending on context.
Why we like it
The author shares that mindfulness and Buddhism cannot be practised in separate worlds. Right Mindfulness is part of the noble 8 fold path. For one to ‘benefit’ from it in the spiritual sense, we need to develop other parts of the path.
If practitioners strive to use mindfulness to reduce suffering, rather than increase it, it’s important to ensure that people are also mindful of themselves as existing in relation with others.
Wise Steps
Even snipers can be taught ‘mindfulness’ of breathing in killing other beings. Know how to ground wholesome qualities in meditation (such as metta) and be familiar with the other aspects of the eightfold path
Comparison is the thief of joy…so how do we stop comparing?
cr: Unsplash
What’s going on here
Ryan Holiday, a stoic writer, shares quick questions we can use to get over our comparing mind state. Comparison is the thief of joy, how shall we fight that default mind state?
Why we like it
While we intellectually know that comparing ourselves to our peers’ social media profiles is not healthy, it is hard to ignore it. These stoic thought experiments can help us jump out of the spirals of comparisons
“Enough will be never be enough for the person to whom enough is too little”
Wise Steps
When we catch ourselves thinking ‘wow, that person has such a shiok life’, reflect about what you have and how you might envy yourself right now if you weren’t yourself.
TLDR: Many of us resort to habits when we are unconscious of what arises in our minds. Being aware of the moment as it happens does help in navigating daily ups and downs.
Meditation is the household term nowadays, with various methods, teachers and even mobile apps to help anyone take on the journey within. The practice is not reserved just for the select groups as many people are welcoming to the idea.
It is the age-old method sworn off by many to help in mindfulness, mental health and spiritual journey, among many benefits. I’m not writing for or against these views, but rather to share how I have experienced it so far.
It does not have to be perfect
I, like many others, have been introduced to meditation for years now and have taken the time to sit quietly on the blocks ( the typical cushion height does not support the posture as well for me 😊) every morning and night – sometimes to contemplate, other times to just stay in silence.
Just as there are days of stillness, there are also days of a rambling distracted mind – which I have come to accept.
While I can’t say for sure whether it has been successful (how do we measure success in meditation, anyway?), the regular practices do help me to be less reactive in daily life.
Take the recent occurrence at work. A team member retorted to a question I asked out of curiosity via company internal chat, commenting that I should probably tell her exactly how she should handle the situation if I was unhappy with her way.
My first reaction was feeling surprised, then a thought “she does not have to react that way”.
A reactive me would probably take on a stance to protect the ego-personality and try to ‘put her in her place’ for being rude (notice the judgment here?).
When emotions arise, breathe
Instead, I took a couple of breaths and decided to leave the chat to attend another meeting.
I called her thirty minutes later and asked “What has happened to cause you to respond that way?”. Probably still holding on to her earlier emotions, she responded with increased intonation in her voice and started to comment on how I was, to borrow her words, being a ‘micro-manager’ and she does not agree with my view of letting the team figure things out for themselves instead of giving guidance right away.
She has called this ‘leaving them in a lurch’. A training method I had applied when training her and she felt it was wrong, considering she had felt lost and had difficulties previously.
The split-second gap in mind
During the few minutes of listening to her, I can feel the heat rising within my body and the internal push of wanting to stop her. Then another thought came into my mind “She is probably under pressure and has internalised her own experience rather than her colleagues’ actual experience”.
Once she was done, I started apologising for not realising she had felt lost before and was unable to help her alleviate the negative experience. She probably did not see it coming, considering it might not be the typical response others would give.
We concluded the conversation with acknowledgement of both of our experiences in the current conversation and agreed on the next steps that both of us are comfortable with.
This incident has highlighted to me the importance and usefulness of awareness and mindfulness I cultivated on the cushion as I go about the day – when the habit of protecting myself and shifting the blame to anything and anyone but me arises.
Keeping friendliness (Metta) in my response and intonation probably helped in preventing the situation from escalating further. After all, I can only control how I respond to the external world by taking self-responsibility for this inner journey.
Wise steps:
Meditation does not have to happen only one way, at a specific time and in a dedicated space
Rather than going on auto-pilot into our (unwholesome) habits, stop to consider what might have caused the negative response
Try to consciously maintain Metta in the mind, it might help to keep heated situations neutral
TLDR: Chanting keeps the mind afloat on the choppy waves of suffering. Connecting you to others across time and space, the ritual of chanting creates a refuge from pain. The healing device of chanting is anything but boring!
Yeap, you read it right. Chanting is crazy helpful. Especially when the mind goes crazy. To a non-believer, chanting can be an unfathomable activity – boring, even superstitious. To a practitioner, chanting cleanses the mind.
Let us understand what chanting is and how it heals.
Chanting Tickles Your Right-Brain
Relying on synchronised tunes and steady rhythms, chanting vocalises the Buddha’s teachings, recollections and praises for the Triple Gem.
Chanting is the ‘feeling’ and ‘healing’ part of a logical and pragmatic religion-philosophy. Done with full intent and focus, chanting soothes the heart like a balm. Cooling and stilling afflictions. Warming and uplifting the mind.
Short of comparing chanting to singing your favourite soundtrackmindfully in full earnest, the voicing of “lyrics” falls within a short range of inflecting tones without musical accompaniment. Chanting with the right understanding of familiar verses leads to joy and peace. Sometimes, tears. On auspicious occasions, goosebumps.
The volitional act of voicing out the Buddha’s teachings, never mind the tune, pledges one’s faith that the Dhamma leads beings out of suffering. This verbal allegiance is not for show but to remind ourselves of the Truth time and again.
Because we forget. In this way, chanting instils a sense of belonging – to the Triple Gem, to a wholesome way of life, to a practice of training towards the human fullest potential, to kindness. To hope.
Knowing how to chant, one plugs into a common Buddhist ritual that binds all differences – nationality, language, race, class, culture, those suffering and those enlightened. Cutting across space and time, in your home, at any temple, in a forest, on mountain tops or at the Buddist holy sites in India — wherever, whenever, chanting connects you to a community of practitioners since Lord Gotama Buddha’s time.
The key to a spiritually satisfying chanting session is then learning how to chant and what to chant, in which language.
The Ritual of Chanting
Typically, chanting is part of a practitioner’s morning and evening routines. Depending on the Buddhist tradition, chanting involves varying extents of ritual, usually set in front of an altar, where possible. Due to my upbringing, I have the fortune of learning how to chant in both the Mahayana (Chinese) and Theravadin (Thai Forest) traditions. Having experienced both, I feel more connected to the latter, which I will give a little exposé below.
Simple in tones and expressions, without instrumental accompaniment, Theravadin chanting is mainly in the Pāli language, an ancient vernacular during Lord Buddha’s time. Disciples of the Thai Forest Tradition alternate between Pāli and translations in their first languages, such as Thai, English, German, and Chinese etc.
From experience, searching up the translated meaning of Pāli verses before chanting helps to quell the critical mind.
After offering incense or candlelight or flowers and paying respects to the Triple Gem by bowing, you put your palms together in añjali, kneeling or sitting with your knees folded away from the altar. If you have learnt the words by heart, close your eyes. If not, set out a chanting book with translation nearby. Gather awareness on your breathing. Ready the mind for spiritual connection.
Then, the chanting begins.
Regardless of chanting in private or in public, alone or in a group, a keen sense of ego arouses when projecting the voice initially.
To avoid suffering, you can set aside that notion of “me/mine/myself” for clear awareness to arise. As the Dhamma rings in your ears and through your body, the vocal cords sync with a sincere heart.
The mind arrives at each articulated word to soak in its meaning.
Peace ensues. Chanting creates a refuge for the moment amidst chaos.
What chants can I turn to?
There is a chant for any time and occasion to counter greed, hatred and delusion, which reside in our hearts since the beginning of time.
Some recollections are snippets of the Buddha’s exhortations; others are full discourses considered as protective chants. Some typical chants a lay practitioner has in his/her spiritual toolkit help uplift the mind into wholesome vibes.
For monastics, cardinal sermons are chanted to maintain the oral tradition of preserving the Buddha’s discourses. Particular recollections pertain to arousing dispassion towards worldly attachments and urgency for practising the Holy life. A set of chants reserved for funerals; another set for blessings.
On every Full Moon and New Moon of the lunar calendar (Uposatha Lunar Observance Days), monks gather together to chant the VinayaPatimokkha, which is the Code of Discipline Lord Gotama Buddha set down for monastics to uphold and honour. Similarly, to upkeep their virtues, the laity would undertake the Five Precepts or Eight Precepts by chanting them on Lunar Observance Days.
Chanting plays important roles in our practice: it teaches us what is skillful and remind us to counter the stubborn poisons within our hearts.
Dr. Buddha, can you prescribe some chanting for my troubled heart?
For practitioners encountering intense emotions such as anger, sorrow, fear, anxiety or grief, listening to chanting is a helpful relief from recurring and distressing thoughts. The act of chanting brings an even greater autonomy over processing negative feelings. An effective spiritual ParacetamolTM that soothes sharp, crippling pains from my personal experience. You will always find an emergency playlist of my favourite chants in my phone on standby for breakdowns.
If you wake up grumpy, listless or sian, what better way to pick yourself up than a cup of warm water and a morning chanting?
For the past year, I made it a point to begin my day with morning chanting, regardless of how much time I have or how long the chanting is. On good days, morning chanting uplifts my mind for a quiet sit. On bad days, chanting seems to be the only wholesome thing I can cling on to for my life. Chanting has since become my anchor in the tumultuous waves of negative emotions.
Without chanting, I am pretty sure I would not have made it through difficult times to be here and write. Crazy helpful, I’d say.
I have listed a couple of resources to support your journey with chanting in the Theravadin Thai Forest Tradition below. Hope you will find a chant that resonates.
Awakening to reality is now generally accepted because like the English word ‘mindfulness’ has become of common use in the western society — in psychology, and science. They talk about teaching mindfulness in primary schools, high schools, to the military, to the parliament.
It’s a word that is overused now. And of course, people criticise this sometimes because in order to rob a bank you have to be mindful. And, to commit a successful crime, to murder somebody and get away with it. This takes a great deal of mindfulness to be able to do that.
But, is that what I mean when I use the word, or what the Buddha meant?
So, mindfulness is our ability to open to the present moment in this sense of sati sampajanna.
These are the two Pali words we use.
Sati is to remember this moment you are kind of awake in the here and now.
Sampajanna is to receive all that exist in this present moment.
It’s not choosing any particular object. It’s not focusing, or concentrating on an object of any sort. But it’s kind of broad spectrum of awareness that is receptive.
And then the foundation for this isn’t based on the desire to rob a bank or commit a murder. The foundation is based on Pāramitā (perfection) or virtues, our good intentions, our meritorious actions.
We have dana and sila.
Dana is the word for generosity. To be able to help others share what we have with others and not to be selfish or stingy. (This) is developing dana paramita.
Sila is to take responsibility. Translated as five precepts, morality, but what it means is to take on responsibility for how you live in the society. To refrain from saying or doing things that in any intentional way that cause unnecessary harm, deceit, or cause suffering to anyone else or to one self.
We’re educated people. So, we have a lot of knowledge. We’ve acquired a lot of knowledge about everything external. We study science, psychology, philosophy, history.
You name it, we acquire knowledge always from books, from teachers, from traditions. So, what we learn in modern education is acquired knowledge. It’s knowledge that we grasp that comes to us from outside.
With sati sampajjana, with mindfulness, then, there’s wisdom developing. It means wisdom in this sense of Buddha wisdom. It isn’t about knowing everything about everything. It’s not about being god up in the heavens, knowing everything that’s going on everywhere, all the time. It’s knowing the way things are.
