Zen: The Art of Nothing

 We have grown up in a society where one is allowed, or even expected, to feel sorry for someone in trouble. To be worried for a loved one is seen as a normal thing, as a sign of concern, affection or love.

But when we sympathise, what are we really expressing, and where is it coming from? When a loved one is in pain, it is quite natural to feel disturbed, and many of us find it hard to see them in that situation, and try our best to pull them out of it. Does this truly pull them out of their mess?

Sympathy and empathy are quite different, and while the latter can help someone quite dramatically, the former can, despite the best intentions, crush a tired soul.

Believe it or not, sympathy is an ego-driven emotion. It is based in the belief that we are somehow superior to the troubled one by the virtue of not being in trouble or having been through it already. It is also based in the need to be needed – a sympathetic person subconsciously believes that the troubled one is not strong enough to handle the problem on his/ her own and needs his/her help to resolve the issue. Therefore the desperation to help the other out, even if the other hasn’t asked for help.

Think about it – if you saw an old man and a teenager fall down simultaneously, whom would you rush to help first? Obviously the old man, because you’d reason that the teen can help himself, but the old man may not be able to. When you believe that a person is incapable of helping himself, you tend to rush to help, irrespective of whether the person has asked for help or not. And in this process, you are subconsciously telling them that you don’t think they are strong enough to handle the problem on their own. Consider the impact of a belief like that on one who is already crumbling under the weight of problems.

Empathy stems from an underlying belief that the other person is completely capable of handling the problem. One would offer to help but not force advice down the person’s throat. An empathetic person would spend much more time listening to the problem, and much less time offering advice. An empathetic person would also be less judgmental, thereby aiding healing, since the other person would be encouraged to feel more self-love and judge himself less harshly.

Here are a few typical statements:
Sympathy: “I know exactly what you’re feeling!”
Empathy: “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re going through right now”
What is really going on: We tend to feel sympathetic when we see a person facing a problem which we internally believe we could not have handled ourselves. That is why we get so disturbed when we see them in it. No matter what the problem is, even if you have been through a similar problem in the past, it is still not identical to the problem being described – the circumstances are totally different. A sympathetic person projects his own problems onto the person, and therefore believes strongly that he knows exactly what the person is talking about. An empathetic person on the other hand, can see clearly that the situation is something he or she has not been through before, so it would be hard to know exactly what the person is going through right now.

Sympathy: “I’m sure if you do this your problem will be solved”
Empathy: “What do you think is the best way to tackle this? Have you tried ?”
What is really going on: Since the sympathetic person believes that the other is incapable of handling his own problems, he takes it upon himself to solve the other’s problems. Solutions are offered one after the other, and this problem takes up much of his time and energy. Even after the other person has finished sharing the problem and gone home, the sympathetic person continues to pace and worry, making his problems his own. What he’s really doing, subconsciously, is asking himself what he would have done, had he been in the same situation. It has nothing to do with the other person.

An empathetic person would stay somewhat outside the picture, being able to see and show the larger perspective, maybe thus offering a larger scope for solutions. It can be compared to a person drowning. A sympathetic person would jump right in, only to realise that he can’t swim either, pulling the other person down with him. An empathetic person would stay out of the water and see if there is any way he can help from outside.

Sympathy: “I just can’t see you like this!”/ “You’re not thinking straight!”
Empathy: “You’re strong, you’ll see this through, just have patience/ faith”
What is really going on: Again, this sympathetic statement is stemming from the internal belief that the person is incapable and not strong enough. The empathetic statement directly conveys confidence and strength, and helps the person have more faith and confidence in himself.

How to be more empathetic
The first step would obviously be identifying when we are being sympathetic, which would require self-observation. Deep listening also helps quite a bit in this process. Once this is done, it is important to understand that we are trying to solve the problem for ourselves, out of our own fears, and not out of genuine concern for the other person. The last step would be to consciously remind ourselves that this person is completely capable of handling the problem on his or her own, and let our thoughts and words follow accordingly.

As I sipped on my cucumber juice, chatting up with two very wise people at a cafe in Tiru, we watched a bunch of foreigners smoke.  I was perplexed.

“Wouldn’t a spiritual aspirant at least first aim to get rid of addictions before seeking higher levels?” I asked.

“None of this is real anyway”, my friend winked at me, and then added “Ram says that Swami Chinmayananda used to smoke too, and eat crappy food… He had 3 bypass surgeries.”

We were just back from a very intense talk by Ramji, who had strongly suggested that so many things we do, including praying, are not going to lead to enlightenment. “Must we stop doing them then?” someone asked. “No. As long as you’re still stuck in this duality, you’ve got to follow it’s rules.”

Isn’t this exactly where so many of us get stuck? Some wise person says or does something and we blindly believe or follow it, unaware that it isn’t relevant to us at all. We’ve got to know and follow our personal truths first.

Swami Chinmayananda, for instance, ate unhealthy food all the time, because he liked it. He knew first hand, that none of this was real anyway. He also knew that the pain and the surgeries weren’t real. Do you?

This is somewhat akin to a high school student declaring that he wouldn’t ever use history as he aims to be a scientist, so studying it would be a waste of time. Now this attitude would affect his grades and in the very least, make it harder for him to become a scientist.

Are you failing any history tests in life?

There was this tiger cub that grew up in a flock of sheep. Life was not so great. While the other sheep were beautiful and white, this tiger had strange yellow and black colors. His voice was also so gruff, while his siblings had sweet voices. He was just never good enough, but now he was used to it. He had learned to accept the fact that he was different.

Until the day he ran into another Tiger, and fell in love. This tiger showed him an entirely new world. He took him to the river and showed him his reflection, made him see his true nature. And helped him realise that he wasn’t not-good-enough, he was just different.

But this opened up a whole new world – of confusion. How were tigers supposed to behave? He’d learned everything he knew from the sheep, and so far all he knew about tigers was that tigers were all-powerful, confident and dangerous. It felt good to know he was the most powerful being on earth and no one could touch him now. No more did he have to run away from the beasts – he WAS the beast!

He felt so good now, life was perfect. There were no more fears, no more running away, no more threat to his life, although he still sometimes caught himself preparing to run when he saw a wolf or a hunting dog. He found the little things that used to affect him when he was a sheep, didn’t affect him anymore now. He had risen above all those petty issues. He felt sorry for the sheep still stuck in the rut and tried to teach them how to act like a tiger.

Then the day came, when he got into a fight with the cheetah. He did it just for fun, because the cheetah mistakenly entered his territory. After all, he was all-powerful and nothing could touch him now. This cheetah had eaten some of his friends and it would be nice to teach it a lesson too. What he hadn’t anticipated was that he would lose the fight, and end up with deep wounds. This was not supposed to happen right? He was supposed to be powerful and mighty, he was not supposed to be defeated by the evil cheetah!

Thus ensued a long and painful time of self-doubt. Maybe he wasn’t a tiger after all. How could it be possible? Tigers were invincible. He clearly wasn’t. Therefore, he wasn’t a tiger. Everyone was wrong. He was just a pathetic ball of yellow and black fur. A good for nothing fellow who didn’t even know who he was.

Then, he discovered religion. Apparently he wasn’t alone. There were others out there, who had been through what he had been through, and they’d found respite in religion. There was a book that told them how they were supposed to behave. He learned he was a tiger after all, but he had to change his ways of life. There were rules about how a tiger was supposed to behave. A tiger was supposed to eat meat. It was supposed to hunt. Supposed to live alone. Supposed to take a nap at noon. He was finally learning how to be a tiger!

He felt so good now. He felt the same things he had felt before. He was powerful after all, he was invincible. He was a tiger! And now he was going to be a good tiger, he would know exactly how to be a good tiger now and no one could touch him again. He spent time with his religious friends and they showed him how to hunt, how to eat meat and how to do other tiger-things.

The excitement slowly started to fade and he started feeling lonely. He missed his sheep family. He missed the comfort of not having to look out for himself, and trusting the hunting dog or the fence for its safety. He wasn’t sure he liked all the things he was supposed to do as a tiger. Sometimes he broke the rules out of frustration. And then he would feel guilty and hate himself because he was clearly not interested in becoming a good tiger. He deserved to be punished for his actions. When he punished himself though, he didn’t necessarily feel better. Often, he felt worse, and again behaved in an un-tigerly fashion. And this got him into a nasty loop. Now he hated himself. He missed the days when he used to feel so good, and he was the perfect, all-powerful tiger. There was a time when nothing affected him, and now it was as if everything just made him feel more miserable.

Then he met another tiger, someone he started calling his guru. He liked this tiger because he was so calm and peaceful. He asked him how a tiger is supposed to behave. But the guru would not answer. Just be yourself, he said. Slowly he started to realise how many expectations he was carrying in his heart. His childhood was spent acting like a sheep. And the rest of his life, acting like a tiger. And also trying to resolve the conflict between the two personalities. And now his guru wouldn’t tell him which of the two behaviours was right. Just be yourself, he would say. How could he be himself? He didn’t know who he was because he was always doing what he was supposed to be doing!

He slowly started letting go of all the ‘supposed-to’s. Sometimes his behaviour was erratic, because he still hadn’t figured out who he was, and his religious friends thought he was a crazy sinner. But he held on. Eventually he let it all go. And he started to realise how easy it was to be a tiger. Things just came naturally. He realised that tigers weren’t all-powerful – it was a tough realisation, because it took all the comfort away, and he wondered what the point was, of being a tiger, if he wasn’t all powerful. But he started to realise that being a tiger had nothing to do with power. It was just a role. And he was no different, really, from the sheep. They were playing their role, he was playing his. And that was all.

When I initially started practicing deep listening, it was so I could be a better therapist. Little did I know it would help me so much more. So while my earlier article on deep listening focussed on how to listen to others, I update it now, with the best part – listening to oneself. Also with step-wise exercise to make it easier to practice.

Meditation is too commonly described as something to ‘do’. You create a quiet, sacred space, and hopefully spend a few minutes in silence and observation everyday. If you were in a noisy, crowded place, do you think it would still be possible to meditate? Yes, it would be.

Meditation is not about external silence, but internal silence. And that is what deep listening is all about – about meditating during communication.

Our lack of peace is seldom due to external noise. So much of the peace-eroding noise is completely internal, and this noise becomes glaringly evident in conversations. When someone is talking, do we ever really listen? We are half processing the information received, rapidly creating a response in our mind, waiting for an opportunity to interrupt the other person and voice our opinion.

An adult has an average attention span of about 22 seconds. Immediately after listening to someone talk, we usually recall only about half of what we’ve heard; within a few hours, only about 20 percent. We talk so much, but we never really listen! Conversations involve so much inner noise, which is why the state is completely opposite to the silence meditation requires.

Anybody who has been serious about being a good communicator, knows about what is called ‘full listening’. Full listening involves paying full attention to what the other person is saying. It involves giving the other person a chance to express himself fully, interrupting only to get a better understanding of what is being said. It may involve the listener summarizing at the end to check if he has understood properly. This kind of listening ensures a proper, healthy two-way communication where both parties can express their concerns and resolve an issue.

Deep listening takes this a couple of steps further. Initially, not only does it focus on the other person through the ears and the mind, but also by absorbing information in other subconscious ways. For example, your subconscious mind might pick up subtle changes in body language and help you understand what the person is really feeling versus what he is expressing.

One is able to listen without any distractions, interpretations, judgments, conclusions, or assumptions – merely an open, curious mind. Deep listening attempts to understand not just the message, but the person behind the words. Further practice of deep listening helps you understand your own feelings and responses to the other person’s views, thereby helping you regulate your behaviour and understand yourself better.

The Advantages
We cannot fix something we do not understand. As long as we are alien to what is really going on inside our own minds, it is very hard to fix it. Deep listening brings you in touch with your suppressed and hidden feelings and helps you sort yourself out.

Deep listening is a very powerful process not only for the listener but also for person who is being listened to. When we are centered and our mind is quiet, it allows us to read between the lines, to observe the choice of words, the body language, and most importantly, the emotion behind the words. We are not concerned about our opinions or views, but interested in understanding exactly what the other person is feeling. Deep listening involves a state so calm, that it is actually therapeutic to the person venting his or her feelings.

How do I practice this?
To make it easy, I recommend a step by step approach.
Step 1: 3-4 days
Practice not interrupting people. Most of us think we don’t interrupt people, but that is because we never notice it when we do. Ask people around you to point out if you interrupt them, and you’ll see how often you do it. When people are talking, let them finish before you voice your views.

Especially in the beginning, it would be a good idea to remind yourself to listen deeply before the start of a conversation. We could do this by asking the other person to sit down, or asking if we could get a cup of tea or coffee before starting to listen. As you wait for the coffee to fill up, or as you sit down, take a deep breath and focus on calming down. Bring your focus to your heart, and feel the silence.

Step 2: 7-8 days
Practice listening calmly with your full attention. Most conversations are not so significant and most of what we want to say isn’t really that important that it cannot be forgotten. When thoughts crop up, allow them to fade away, without creating a response in your head. If you are able to sense any feeling as the person talks, you might want to verify it with the other person, for example, by asking ‘Does that make you angry?’ Remove any judgments or conclusions that crop up in your mind and bring your focus back to your heart again. In the same coin, do not give any advice until the very end.

In the initial stages we tend to have views we want to express, and worry that we might forget them by the time the other is done talking. But if what you want to say is really relavant, you will remember it again. Let your thoughts fade away, and focus completely on the other person.

Step 3: Deep Listening
Deep listening does not only involve listening to others. It allows you to listen to yourself too, and to life in general. When the other talks, be completely aware of what you are feeling. Not only listen to them, but also be aware of what is going on inside you as the other person speaks.

Deep listening doesn’t stop merely at words, but extends to your thoughts. Even when you are thinking, ask yourself – what am I really feeling. When you find yourself getting frustrated for example, try focusing on what you are feeling, and not on what the other person is doing. This will increase your understanding of yourself, apart from helping you resolve your emotion faster.

For example, assume you are having a conversation with your friend about difficulties at his work. When he describes his situation, you find that you are very tempted to jump and offer advice. However, because of your previous practice of full listening, you curb this desire. At this point, stop and ask yourself – why do I feel the need to offer this advice? Maybe you will discover that you are uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with this situation yourself, and want to offer some advice so that your friend stops talking about it. This might help you discover some fears, which you can choose to work on later, again asking yourself what are you really afraid of, and then taking it deeper.

Additionally:
It also helps to keep a diary where you just write down your feelings. Not the events of the day, but what you feel. Mentally scan the day for any intense emotions, close your eyes and dwell on it for a while, feeling the emotion deeply, and then write about it, asking every few moments what you are really feeling. Write as you think. This method is really useful in resolving intense emotions quickly.