Brother Phap An, one of the monastics at Plum Village tells a story in a dharma talk about when he was a fresh young monk and was planning a summer retreat. Another monk had refused to take on organising one of the festivals because his predecessor had not provided him with a handover. Brother Phap An begged him to but he still refused.
The young monastic was very upset. In a group meeting with Thich Nhat Hanh (or Thay as we call him) later on the monastics were providing support and friendship to each other in advance of the retreat. They were asked if there were any questions. “Yes, I have a question.” The Brother stood up and asked, “How can we organise a summer retreat when someone here refuses to take the responsibility of doing his work?” He continued to complain. Thay invited him to return to his seat and enjoy being silent.
Later the young monk apologised to Thay - kind of. He said “I’m sorry - but I was only speaking the truth.” Thay said, “What you spoke was not the truth. Truth is something that has the capacity to reconcile, to give people hope, to give people happiness. That is truth! When you speak and it causes damage, even though it may be correct, it is not truth.”
So what should we do? When we feel we need to say something because things are not as they should be? Its important to differentiate between deep truth and what feels true. The second is very easy to define - when we’re angry, when we’re sad, when we’re stressed we perceive the world in a particular way, we lose our perspective and view the world very narrowly - kind of like looking at it through a keyhole. What we see feels true but the wider context is obscured. We see a particular form of our mental model of reality, not reality itself.
When we notice our impulse to call someone out, we need to scan internally and notice the lens that we’re viewing the situation through whether that's emotions, experience, culture or knowledge. I would then invite you to try to see the deep truth of what's happening - the actual reality. To do that we need to look at it through the lens of interbeing, the idea that everything is connected. The actions of the other person might seem unreasonable to us but we can choose to see their suffering, the life they’ve had that has led them to this point.
We can also choose to accept the possibility that we’ve completely misunderstood the situation. There’s a great acronym for speaking with compassion called THINK: is it true? Is it helpful? Is it inspiring? Is it necessary? Is it kind? If we can give ourselves just a few moments to check what we’re going to say before we say it we can make the world a kinder place even when we do need to have a difficult conversation.
And sometimes it is the best choice to share a gentle truth with someone if we believe it’s kind and will help. We can use our loving kindness to wish that person well before we speak - “may you be happy, may you be peaceful and may you see yourself through the eyes of understanding and compassion.” But the last thought I’d leave you with is whether people really need to be told the truth or whether you can plant the seed in other ways, either through questions or the example of your practice, your peace. I come from a culture where everyone is always in each other’s business and always has an opinion or judgement on how things ought to be. I’ve found that most of the time for me, it’s better to choose to say nothing - best captured in the final question: does it improve the silence?
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