Finding Compassion in Silence

The last post discussed what it means to use our words to bring peace, how our words can be our yoga. What about using our silence?

My senior year in high school, I decided to ask many of my friends and family what they considered a good friend. I got a lot of answers, most of which I have forgotten. But one stuck with me. And to be honest, I cannot remember, for sure, whose response it was, but I am pretty sure I remember. The response was simple.

A good friend is someone with whom you can sit in silence. So profound. So true.

Our interactions with one another can be through words. And often they are. But how do we interact with one another in silence? Is our silent interaction different depending on whether we are in the same room as someone? Does it matter if we know the person with whom we are “interacting”?

The modern world, I think, would try to say yes. Many people believe we cannot interact with someone we do not know. Many people think we cannot interact with someone who is not physically present. But yoga teaches another type of interaction – silent and to anyone in the world. It can best be described as compassion.

I have been reading a lot recently about compassion. This topic consumed me for years, and I read everything I could about it, and then I just stopped. I did not stop trying to be compassionate, but it fell off my reading-list radar. But I see it more and more as a necessity in the world. As the Dalai Lama has said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

There are tomes written about compassion. At its essence, compassion is sympathy for others’ suffering as well as a desire to help alleviate that suffering. Buddhism teaches that suffering is inevitable, so compassion is a connection to all beings because all beings suffer.

Sometimes this sense of compassion is lost when there is too much noise. Noise can be our gossip or our own judgments. Noise can be our words, whether kind or malicious. It is when we are silent that we can truly begin to feel compassion. For me, the yoga mat has been a place to cultivate compassion. It is necessary to have compassion for ourselves on the mat, but it was when I began to offer my practice to others that my practice truly transformed.

At the end of my practice, I always try to remember to offer the practice to others. Sometimes there is someone, or several people, in particular who I believe are in need of the benefits of a yoga practice. Sometimes, when no one immediately comes to mind, I offer the practice to the world. While this practice may seem to be impossible, the truth is that our language is full of our beliefs that it is possible. We talk about sending good thoughts and love. We offer prayers for people. These are all moments of compassion.

But the first step is quieting the mind, getting out of the world where our judgments rule and into the world where we can tune into the heart and find compassion for all beings. My high school friend was onto something. While friendships might be created on playgrounds, late at night in dorm rooms, and at the water cooler, the best friends are those with whom we can be in silence. Because it is with those friends where we truly feel our deepest compassion and connection.

And through our continued silence, we can spread that compassion to the world. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you try to grow and share your compassion.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

Speaking Yoga

"Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.” – Buddha

The word yoga is often translated as "union." Literally, it means "to yoke," and metaphorically, this has come to mean union. Words are one way to bring union among people. Words are how we communicate, how we interact with other people. But what good do they do if they are not used to bring us peace amongst each other? How do they create this union? Words can be scathing, hollow, or positive, but they always affect the listener. We must be conscious not only of how we think our words will be heard but of how the listener will actually hear them.

Lawyers like to talk. A lot. In fact, most people like to talk. For some reason, people feel the need to make noise and fill the emptiness that is silence. But how many of the words we speak are hollow words? How often do we speak only to hear the sound of our own voice? How many of the words we speak do not bring peace to others or ourselves? How often do our words create dis-union rather than union?

What if we made a commitment to using our words for the benefit of others? What if we consciously used our words to bring peace to others and ourselves? What if we used our words to create the union of yoga? A conscious effort to have our words bring peace is a conscious effort to consider how others may hear our words. Making the commitment is a step toward empathy and compassion. We want to bring peace, and we are conscious of how best to do it.

The first, and I believe most important, step is to meet people where they are. This is definitely a lesson I have learned from yoga. In discussions about trauma-informed yoga classes, teachers must be conscious that while for some people, “lie down and relax” is a stress-relieving statement, for someone who has been held down by someone, it can trigger a trauma response. Understanding where people are, and how they view the world, helps us choose our words carefully so as not to cause them harm we do not mean.

Second, we can ask ourselves what people may want or need to hear to bring them peace in this moment. I often think to myself in difficult situations that there are simply no words that can express what it is I want to say. But sometimes a simple acknowledgement that we care is enough to bring a moment of peace. We need not come up with a tome of how we feel about a particular situation. Instead, a simple word or two, along with our presence, might be sufficient.

Third, and this is one we so often forget, we can ask people what they need. So often, we think we know what other people want and need, especially when we are stressed or worried about saying the right thing. We speak and stumble over our words until we are blue in the face without ever stopping to ask, “what do you need?”

People in helping professions such as lawyers, psychologists, etc., have a tendency to use a lot of words to explain and counsel their clients. Those words may be necessary, but they also often fall on deaf ears. Sometimes people are not ready to hear them. Sometimes they are simply unable to understand. Those words become hollow words, even when we mean them to bring peace. The Buddha is not saying that these hollow words are bad or wrong or improper. But they do not serve the same purpose as one word that might bring peace.

Taking the time to stop and ask ourselves, and the listener as well, what it is that will bring peace in the moment, is a better use of the universe’s energy, and our own. It also forces us into the moment and forces us to create a deeper union with each other. That is how we create yoga. 

How can you bring a sense of union and peace to your words? Can we present a world of empathy and compassion where our words are designed to always bring peace to the listener? How would that world look to you?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Five a Day

The last post was all about the need to keep the yoga bucket full, so when we feel like we are losing our sanity, we have some reserves upon which we can fall back. But how do we do that? What sorts of tricks can we utilize when our lives feel like they are falling apart?

The answer is simple – five a day. With just five minutes per day, we can begin to refill our reserves, to refill our buckets.

One of the main culprits for feeling so overwhelmed is the constant barrage of information into our lives, whether new cases, emails, phone calls, texts, facebook, or even the radio, there is always noise around us. Interestingly, people in New Zealand speak very quietly. A common complaint among Americans is that the Kiwis are difficult to hear. I joked that it was because they live in a quieter place, so they do not have to scream to be heard. Then I came back to the United States, and I realized it was no joke. This place is LOUD.

But this barrage of noise and information is not unique to Americans. Even the Kiwis are plagued by it; their voice decibel level has simply not caught up. The New York Times had two great articles about the need for silence recently (here and here), and both of them point out how we are paradoxically more productive when we take the time to turn off and unplug.

The easiest way to do this is to take five minutes per day to be in silence. Personally, I prefer the morning, in order to start my day in the serenity and clearing that silence allows. Others prefer right in the middle of the day, an opportunity to take a break from the insanity and let it all disappear into the silence. Still others prefer the evening, just before bed, as a chance to end their day in the silence and sleep more profoundly. Ideally, we would all utilize moments throughout the day to be in silence, but starting small helps ensure we continue the practice.

There are no rules. There is no way to do this wrong. There is nothing in particular about which you must think or about which you are forbidden from thinking. I am purposefully not using the word meditation here. While I often use this time for my meditation practice, it need not be a defined type of meditation. 

Just silence. Just stillness. Just allow yourself five minutes per day, every single day.

I find that five minutes sounds like nothing until I try to do it, and then I find that some days I cannot even make five minutes for stillness. I know it is a choice I am making, but still, the thought of “wasting” that time in stillness creeps up into my ego. But I know (and so do you, dear reader) that this time is exactly what we need to ensure we are not wasting the rest of our time.

As an added bonus, though not in place of the five minutes of complete silence, I have found another place to find silence – the car. My first couple of weeks at my new job put me into a state of stress I do not think I have experienced since the end of college when I was working 35 hours per week, writing a thesis, and caring for my sick grandfather who lived 30 miles away. The end of the second week at my new job was better for three reasons: 1) my wonderful boss came back from vacation and was a huge help, 2) I restarted my (at least) five minutes per day, and 3) I turned off the radio in my car. The job requires a lot, and I mean a lot, of driving, and I have begun to use the car as an opportunity to sit in silence even amongst the horrific driving conditions that are Tucson, Arizona.

But the car is just a bonus. The true benefit, the true need, is complete, intentional silence when we can turn off completely. As much as I would like to turn off completely in the car, I think others on the road may disapprove. So, the mornings are mine. Silent and calm. Start small, start with five minutes, and see if you can begin to refill your reserves.

Where can you find five minutes?

Namaste.

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.