I first heard about zen buddhism when i was 20. A friend told me this story about an American who went to Japan and became the disciple of a Zen monk who was a gemmologist. The monk had taken a vow of silence. On the first day he gave the American a stone and asked him to keep it in his hand all the time, night and day and never to part with it. The excited student did just that. He went about his business which was mainly waiting and hanging around the monastery with the stone in his hand. Weeks passed. The monk would sit every day in meditation amongst the group but never communicate anything else to his disciple. The stone stayed in the American's hand until it felt like another part of him. Finally, one day, quite fed up with all that waiting and increasingly suspicious that he had been duped, the American threw the stone in front of the monk and gave vent to his feelings. The monk listened patiently, then quietly picked up the stone and put it back in the man's palm. The next moment the American exclaimed- 'this isn't my stone!'
The monk smiled smugly and indicated something like this in sign language: Congrats. You've just passed your first lesson!
Apparently, the man had learned every property of the stone through touch. So when he was handed a replica he recognised it immediately.
Moral of the story: Language is not always the best medium of communication. A lesson i've tried to apply since then to my life with a lot of interesting results.
For one, it saves energy. Imagine going through the same drivel of words everyday! For another, it creates interesting situations, sometimes funny. Take for example the familiar strangers i meet everyday, the autowallahs and rickshawalahs in my commute. A few rides later the necessity of language is pretty much dispensed with. The flowchart is like this. Come out, see autowala, mutual recognition through neurons on both sides, hop on the vehicle, drive to destination, pay fare, exit.
Non verbal communication at its best!
Try it out. You might be surprised. Language is often quite useless and superfluous, especially when confronted with emotions like anger, frustration, rage and complete idiocity. If someone is flinging a vase at you, would you hunt around for verbs and adjectives or would you trust your motor nerves to send signals at supersonic speed? I know what i would do.
I often think I have Zen Buddhism to thank for this.
4 comments:
wow Interesting !! communicating with expressions or signs can be so much fun to practice.. specially if we try out with our friends and prefer talking through signs and expressions..
You narrated a great story out there about that monk about his technique of giving a message with signs and actions.. Zen reminds me of meditation also, try out its instrumental music as well, works great for relaxing mind specially when you are tired or stressed out from work :)
Yes, language is not always the best medium of communication and non verbal communication can prove to be a boon. From the zen perspective, language would often seem to be quite useless and superfluous but the truth is that in life, it is seldom feasible to rely on non verbal senses alone. Given our propensity to Western communication styles which have a “transmitter orientation”- it is the speaker’s responsibility to communicate ideas clearly and unambiguously- we often ignore the Asian forms, closer maybe to zen ideals, where it is up to the listener to make sense of what is being said. If each party in a conversation must pay attention to the motivation and desires of the other, the beauty in the subtlety of any exchange will never be lost. Another ingredient for this type of communication to succeed is for the two parties to have luxury of time. In a lighter vein, it doesn’t work for example between the crew in an aeroplane cockpit on a stormy night with an exhausted pilot trying to land with a faulty ILS….All said and done the truth , like you mention, is – “speech is silver while silence is gold”…….lets listen to the sounds of silence…..as ever…great reading Roo…bravo
Indeed, listening is the key to better communication. I believe it's taught in management schools. But there's another form which we Indians have mastered- the monosyllabic and missed call communication. All greetings, formalities are done with. Dial no, deliver msg, hang up. Have you ever wondered how loaded with information the missed call is?
I know this may be hard to be believed but I don't talk much... yeah, the laugh's on me!
People around me often wonder how I can keep quiet for so long at a stretch. Mom could never decipher my silence!
I am laughing reading your comment. With the missed call practice, we have started missing out on our relationships could be too, because there, we chose to stay quiet. See, we are practicing after all.
Hugs xo
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