Right Speech: Active Listening as Verbal Sticky Hands and Its Application to On-Line Communication

In Wing Chun (詠春) a major part of training is chi sau (黐手),  which as Wikipedia notes:

Chi Sao (Chinese 黐手, Cantonese chi¹ sau², Mandarin chǐshǒu) or "sticking hands". Term for the principle, and drills used for the development of automatic reflexes upon contact and the idea of "sticking" to the opponent. Although, in reality the intention is not to stick at all costs, but rather to protect your centerline while attacking your opponent's centerline.^[19] In Wing Chun this is practiced through two practitioners maintaining contact with each other's forearms while executing techniques, thereby training each other to sense changes in body mechanics, pressure, momentum and "feel". This increased sensitivity gained from this drill helps a practitioner attack and counter an opponent's movements precisely, quickly and with the appropriate technique.

Chi Sao additionally refers to methods of rolling hands drills (Luk Sao). Luk Sao participants push and "roll" their forearms against each other in a single circle while trying to remain relaxed. The aim is to feel forces, test resistances and find defensive gaps. Other branches do a version of this where each of the arms roll in small separate circles. Luk Sao is most notably taught within the Pan Nam branches where both the larger rolling drills and the method where each of the arms roll in small separate circles are taught.

In some lineages (such as the Yip Man and Jiu Wan branches), Chi Sao drills begin with one-armed sets called Dan Chi Sao which help the novice student to get the feel of the exercise, each practitioner uses one hand from the same side as they face each other. Chi Sao is a sensitivity drill to obtain specific responses, it should not be confused with sparring/fighting, though it can be practiced or expressed in a combat form.

The practice of 黐手 is fundamental to developing the relaxed and calm yet mindful mind needed to act effectively when some guy might try to beat the snot out of you.  It is a form of mindfulness with, uh, really practical application. (Yes, I'm told many of my sifu's senior students do meditate.  As do I.)

This mindset, once experienced, can be applied in other areas. In effect,  黐手 is a kind of "active listening" but using the senses of touch and proprioception instead of hearing.  And to tell you the truth 黐手   has  been very helpful for me to improve my active listening skills and to try to get to agreement, which, as I noted elsewhere, is useful in business settings.  It's also useful in other settings too, I've found, for example, in communicating on the internet.  I've used this with a wide variety of fora. It doesn't work against everyone of course; there are people who will not have an open mind.  But if there is "right speech"  - and I think there is - it contains the skill of trying to be empathetic towards the views of others, even if their views are expressed in satire or ideology.

It's the lack of the ability to do this by Kenneth Folk that convinced me that whatever he's been doing, it's not really so deep - he hasn't figured this out. Instead of specifically responding to specific charges made against his practice, he did indeed deflect away from those charges.

Go read the link on active listening from Wikipedia and other sources on the 'net.  Try it with a person you find "difficult" to whom to communicate.  Unless they're entirely shut down, you'll be surprised at the results.

Shorter version of the last post:

I know that I know what I know.
They know that they know what they know.
I don't know what I don't know.
They don't know what they don't know.
I know some of  what they don't know.
I know some of what they know.
They don't know that what they don't know
includes some of what I know.
I don't know that what I don't know
includes some of what they know.


(Apologies to R.D. Laing)

"Class Warfare" and the Rectification of Names

To an electrical engineer, a rectifier is a device that permits current to flow in only one direction; a.k.a., a big diode.  It's used to convert AC to DC in what (even more inexplicably) is called an "inverter."  The dictionary defines "rectify" as to put or set right.  It was because of my familiarity with the electrical definition and my recent visit to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, that I was drawn to the Wikipedia entry on "The Rectification of Names."

Wikipedia quotes a translation of the Analects:

A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

Now as Buddhists we might be able to  take issue with the details of the philosophy behind the rectification of names,  but in both traditions right speech is important.

So it is with some interest - and the fact that I like reading about history - that I have seen that any proposal for getting the wealthier to actually contribute a fair share to the cultivation of American society is described as "class war" or "class warfare."

Look, if the revolutions in Russia or China are the basis for rhetoric, we should at least know what the rhetoric actually means.  In this case, "class war" waged from the left is where the workers seize the means of production, and tell the indolent wealthy they have a choice of working for a wage more representative of what the rest of society is making or consider being treated as enemies of the people.

Now I'm not suggesting such things, really, though where I live over a quarter of the children in my county are deemed food insecure. But I would encourage the right wing to be more careful in their speech; some of these hungry people might actually think - and be encouraged to engage in - the kind of class warfare that hurts those who are waging such quiet violence upon the poor.  And make no mistake, under such class war jobs would be created.  Somebody would have to oversee Rush Limbaugh & David Koch's work in the rice fields.  But it'd be a hell of a lot easier and a hell of a lot more harmonious to get them simply to pay their fair share to contribute to society.  As Thers over at Eschaton quotes Elizabeth Warren, whose words need no rectification:

I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No!
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

 Seems pretty sensible to me.

Right Speech: A Case Study Thanks to Bob Dylan, Time Magazine and D. A. Pennebaker

The video above is a clip from "Don't Look Back," D. A. Pennebaker's documentary on Bob Dylan. I found this clip when I was looking for a clip of "Subterranean Homesick Blues," but found this instead. The "Subterranean Homesick Blues" bit is one of the most iconic scenes ever filmed in a documentary; it's probably the only scene from a documentary ever to be parodied by Weird Al Yankovic (replacing Dylan's lyrics with nonsense palindromes).

But the above scene is far more compelling, and says volumes about human behavior, the American media, and the limits of human communication when deep mistrust is present.  Not to mention it well encapsulates the so-called "generaton gap" that was prevalent at the time.

Notice that neither the reporter from Time, nor Dylan actually is talking to each other.  Instead, they're talking at each other - they are talking to what each thinks the other is, based on their preconceived notions.  They're speaking without consideration that the other is another human being, in a similar but different situation.  Now it may be true that each person in this conversation really has no interest in speaking with the other, or with coming to an understanding with the other person, and the fact is, they don't.  Both of them do not - despite, if you watch closely, numerous opportunities to be able to sympathize and affirm where the other person is in life.  Maybe that was part of the times.  But it clearly is an object lesson for us.

What could each have said to have spoken beyond the position they were in, to actually meet  another person?