How to Communicate and Win Hearts for All Time

These days, communication matters to everyone. As long as we still live in a world of gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, happiness and suffering, cleverness and wisdom in communication are absolutely essential.

The stream of human life is made up of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. The eye is for seeing, the ear for hearing, the nose for smelling, the tongue for tasting, the body for feeling cold and heat, and the mind for thinking.

Everyone whose eyes work is able to see. But being able to see is different from knowing how to see; being able to hear is different from knowing how to hear; being able to communicate is different from knowing how to communicate. The word able (in Thai, dai) and the word skilled (pen) are different, because if we are merely able, we have not yet reached the Buddha’s teaching. So the way of thinking we should adopt is to shift from able to skilled.

If we use the word able, there is both liking and disliking. Liking is liking driven by greed (lobha); disliking is aversion (dosa); not understanding is delusion (moha). These three are lust, irritation and infatuation.

Take looking, for example. There is looking to consume and looking to study. If we look to consume, all we get is liking or disliking. Looking to study is different: it lets us see all around, that is, see both the strong points and the weak points, and see the way out, knowing how we should relate to and deal with that thing so as to gather what is beneficial and avoid what is not.

If we use the word skilled, it is no longer looking to consume but looking to study. It is not just taking our liking and disliking; we must study, investigating and discerning whether something is beneficial or not, appropriate or not, and how we can draw benefit from what we see, study and learn. In the same way with hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking: whether we will be merely able or truly skilled, we must consider carefully.

Communicating so as to win hearts means winning over bad feelings. If we can first remove lust, irritation, intoxication and infatuation, and only then communicate, it becomes speaking truly and acting truly, with sincerity. These three kinds of truth become truthful speech (sacca-vācā), namely:

1. Speech that is true
2. Speaking what is beneficial
3. Speaking at the right time and place
4. Speaking with gentle words
5. Speaking with mettā (loving-kindness)

Communicating so as to win over ourselves and win over others: winning hearts means conquering the defilements, namely greed, wanting to get, wanting to be big, narrow-mindedness, anger, intoxication and infatuation, before we communicate. Train confidence, train the strength of mindfulness, steadiness and patience, and develop wisdom. When our set of thoughts, with confidence, love for what we do, diligent effort, a focused mind and wisdom coming in to examine, is what drives our actions of body and speech outward, that is called communicating rightly. Winning over ourselves means first conquering the defilements within.

Beyond this, we must set a firm principle: whether we meet with true speech or false, beneficial or not, timely or untimely, gentle or harsh, spoken with loving-kindness or with aversion, our minds will not waver. We will not utter evil words. We will have the restraint of patience (khanti), that is, endurance, accepting things with wisdom, and we will act for the other person’s benefit.

Good communication must be done with loving-kindness, karuṇā (compassion) and muditā (sympathetic joy). If aversion arises, first put it out. Know the right moment to communicate: know causes, know effects, know yourself, know moderation, know the right time, know the particular community and society, and know the person: what kind of words they like, whether they like to listen or not, whether after listening they remember or not, understand or not, and whether after understanding they can put it into practice or not. Focus on that particular person. Read the situation thoroughly with knowledge and understanding. If you can do this, it is wise communication, and you will win others’ hearts.

Good speech must be driven by a wholesome mind. Set your mind like the earth: whatever filth anyone pours on it, it does not waver. You must know the right time to speak. Even if something is true and beneficial, if it does not yet suit that person or that place, you must wait for the right time. Only then does it accord with the saying: be skillful, know how to speak, and know the right time.