Maybe you are motivated by the desire, by the determination to use kind speech. Because you know that if you don't, the other person will not listen to you. So you are determined this time to speak in a very gentle way so that he can accept to sit and listen to you. But even with that good intention, you cannot do it because the suffering, the pain in you is so big. You just begin a few sentences and then you touch the suffering in it and your voice will be vibrated with bitterness, with pain, and the other person cannot bear it. He or she has to run away because your speech is touching the seeds of suffering in him or in her. And that is why in many families no one can listen to anyone else and communication has become impossible. This is the biggest problem of our time.

Technologically, we have invented very sophisticated means for communication. In no time at all we can send a long message to the other side of the earth. But at this very moment, communication between father and son, husband and wife, nation to nation, has become very difficult. Look at the person who is full of suffering and who has not yet any chance to speak, to communicate his suffering to anyone. He looks like a bomb ready to explode. A lot of tension, a lot of pain. And in fact that person explodes many times a day. That is why the people in his family are afraid of him, are afraid of her. And they try to keep away from him or her. And that person has the feeling that people boycott him.

[One sound of the bell.]

And you yourself, from time to time you are motivated by compassion, you want to come to help. But you are somehow afraid, because he is ready to explode. Without skillfulness, you might touch seeds of suffering in him. And you have done it several times already, so now you are not very enthusiastic about helping him or her. You have to learn the art of defusing the bomb. You have to be very skillful. And according to this practice, you have to learn the art of compassionate listening. You have to learn the art of kind, loving speech. It takes several weeks in order to learn. It takes several weeks of training or practice in order to be able to listen again and to speak with loving kindness again.