Trusting Unfolding Speech

   During the Complete Enlightenment Study group tonight, I had many thoughts about the stages of non-attachment that practitioners go through on the path to enlightenment. One area that I need the most help in involves adjusting my attitude to the view that we are all Buddha nature. All sentient beings are simply Buddha nature embodied. What this entails is a trust in the unfolding experience, knowing that whatever is happening is a manifestation of all the Buddhadharma's key qualities of emptiness, no self and impermanence. By letting go of our thoughts about situations, events or people involved, we come to appreciate their brief stay in the mind, as well as the fact that they are by no means posing a threat to the self. They are, in the end, phenomena, just like the rainbow colors on a kaleidoscope. Knowing this, we can learn to enjoy and appreciate whatever situations involve as the different permutations of experience. At the end of the day, they are all Buddha nature because it takes a mind to experience anything.

   This attitude doesn't mean that we simply slack off and do nothing. I think the better approach is simply to ask ourselves, what does this situation ask of me? How can I be an instrument in the grand orchestration and unfolding of Buddha nature? And I use this musical metaphor on purpose, to suggest that all of life is the harmonization of different forms. What we create from these forms can ultimately liberate all sentient beings if we take on the right approach and attitude. This also, paradoxically, involves reframing what it means to "do something" or to be productive.

   In work meetings, for example, you may find yourself in situations where you seem to have little to contribute to the discussion, or are even surrounded by people who are much more experienced, qualified and talented than you are. There are several ways we can face these experiences. One way is to strive to emulate these people, knowing that they are the A+ students who are worthy of imitation. When we ask the right questions and engage in the right way, we too can be the top scoring students. This is a very admirable position, and I have seen many people succeed through their emulation of those who exceed their skill levels and experience.

   One other option, however, is more subtle than this. Rather than seeing the other as "better" than myself, why not accept the fact that what I am witnessing is really all Buddha nature? Buddha nature encompasses both the one who is speaking and the one who is listening: the words uttered and the words heard. When I adopt this more even-minded approach, I start to realize that the words do not need to create comparisons between the speaker and the listener, since in that moment, the speaker and listener codependently arise within the same mind. When I am listening to someone, my mind is both registering the sounds of the speaker and listening. Why bother to divide my listening functioning from the speaking functioning when they are both supported by the same fundamental awareness? This way, we can listen to the words with complete and total equanimity. There is no need to take a side, or compare the speaker's words to the listener's words. I refer to this as a complete and utter trust in the unfolding of the conversation, which feels light and fresh because there is no illusion that words are being transferred from one "brain" to another brain. Therefore, there is no burden of being overloaded in meetings. The metaphors we subconsciously adopt to describe speech acts  start to collapse.

   Now, an interesting thing happens when we adopt this complete trust in the unfolding moment. That is, words start to gradually lose their implication of choice, urgency and emotionality, because there is no longer the urgency to act on speech based on the emotional loaded nature of speech acts. That is, I am no longer tied up to the idea that words must produce actions and agency. Secondly, when this happens, I am freed up to adopt a different perspective on communication altogether: one which neither privileges the speaker nor burdens the listener. Then I am free to enjoy the words, in the same way that children enjoy the images produced on kaleidoscopes. The words, after all, have amazing combinations and produce all kinds of interesting images and ideas. There is no pressure to act on those images and ideas, but only to enjoy their unfolding in a similar way that movies or musical scores unfold. Then the learning itself is more relaxed and there may even be a sense of dissolving of the self and other.