Loving Speech and Deep Listening

At the Buddhist retreat, I learned the Five Mindfulness Trainings. The fourth one seems very helpful to me. these are guidelines, not commandments, and I'll try to read them over frequently and practice them when possible.

Fourth Mindfulness Training: Loving Speech and Deep Listening

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations. 

Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am committed to speaking truthfully using words that inspire confidence, joy, and hope. 

When anger is manifesting in me, I am determined not to speak. I will practice mindful breathing and walking in order to recognize and to look deeply into my anger. I know that the roots of anger can be found in my wrong perceptions and lack of understanding of the suffering in myself and in the other person. 

I will speak and listen in a way that can help myself and the other person to transform suffering and see the way out of difficult situations. 

I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to utter words that can cause division or discord. 

I will practice Right Diligence to nourish my capacity for understanding, love, joy, and inclusiveness, and gradually transform anger, violence, and fear that lie deep in my consciousness.

In names there is power and magic

Today I met a friend's five-year-old daughter at an awesome playground. Her grandmother had previously told me that she had named herself something interesting.

I asked, "what is your name?
She said "NorLeeLee big
big big big big
big big big big big
big big big Girl."

According to the mother, a good friend of mine, this girl's 8 year old brother insists that everyone call him either Daisy or Daphne, depending on his mood each day.

Surprised, I enquired whether people at school actually calls him using those two names. She replied yes. [Oh, Canadian public schools.  I miss you so.]

I shouldn't be too surprised.  My friend and I have specific names for ourselves, only in the context of our friendship.  I've asked her to call me Hubcap and she is Esquante.

I have another friend whose name is often mispronounced.  She calls herself "Any."  Logically, when we are together I become "Every."

It's fun to change names like we change into different clothes, depending on the occasion and context.  Today I'm Drummer Husky Girl.  Also known as Stephen Hawking Jr. the Third.

White Labra-husky juggling tennis ball

Day 4 of my friends-only week in my hometown. Such a novel experience living in a different neighbourhood, on the "wrong" side of the tracks, just a few blocks south and east of where I attended high school in 1985-88.

In this house lives a gorgeous white Labra-Husky dog named Sasha, 4 years old and recovering from life as a feral dog on a Native reservation.

Sasha is terrified of men wearing hats, and anything that looks like a hockey stick. When I went along with my host, filmmaker T, for her morning walk near the Mill Creek Ravine, she trembled like a leaf whenever someone on rollerblades got within 200m of us. But when she's at home she is friendly and happy to play with tennis balls. She has a neat way of juggling the ball by throwing it upwards and catching it again with her jaws. Never seen a dog juggle before.

I am so glad I decided to rent this place for 2 whole weeks. It's starting to feel like a vacation! Hometown has changed significantly over the 19 years since I left. Demographically, culturally, geographically, visually. 

Unfamiliar smells. A veiled woman driving a beat up Honda.  Pick up trucks blasting country music, inexplicably slowing from 60 km/h to 10, then stopping for me to cross the street.  Defeated stubborn men in their late 50s avoiding eye contact in the aisles of the wholesale store where I found no-name rice cakes and fresh kale alongside huge sacks of jasmine rice, varieties of Indian fried snacks and acres of cylindrical potato chip containers.  

Small groups of children in back yards who continue playing while waving hello to me, a total stranger, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  I've forgotten what it was like to grow up here.

I guess there have always been many new things to discover every time I visit, but this is the first time I've had enough time, privacy, space, and relaxed energy to notice them. It's really important to me to have a room of my own.