“Avoid giving advice, even if it asked for.
In general, it is helpful to always use the word “I” instead of the word “you”. Speaking from our own experience eliminates the opportunity to give advice. If someone asks for advice and a practice that we have worked with comes to mind it is fine to share our experience rather than telling someone what she or he should do.”
~Order of Interbeing website. Dharma sharing guidelines.
“Advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“If you listen too much to advice, you may wind up making other people’s mistakes.”
~CROFT M. PENTZ, 1001 Things Your Mother Told You
“Good advice offering requires knowing a person very, very well. So well, in fact, that you may know more about them than they know about themselves in certain situations. Then, good advice is loving and given out of love. It is never to control or manipulate. Then, it is giving information; just giving, not enforcing, information. And lastly and most importantly, after advice is given, the outcome is let go of completely, trusting that the other person will take it, leave it, or ponder it.”
~ANNE WILSON SCHAEF, Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much
Dear Friends,
I hope you are well, happy, and finding some ease today. One habit that’s been on my mind is the desire to advise. The first time I noticed this, I was in a dharma sharing group at Blue Cliff monastery and one of the guidelines was “avoid giving advice.” We were to practice deep listening, listening with the express intention of hearing what it was like to be the other person. This guideline was not only included in the dharma sharing circle but in the sangha in general. No advice.
I was dismayed to find that I had a strong habit of giving advice. I had never noticed how quick I was to offer helpful suggestions, to give names, websites, “try this. It worked for me.” I also saw that I came from a lineage of advice givers.
Once I stopped feeling ashamed of my unmindful habit, I took a deep look. I was uncomfortable with the unhappiness and suffering I saw in the other person. I wanted them to feel better, to be better, to be happy and healed—fast. And I noticed conversely, how spending time with someone who repeatedly said, “you should really….” Left me feeling small and diminished after the visit. In her advice I heard, you’re doing it all wrong. You clearly do not have the skills to meet these challenges and you aren’t trusted. It felt a lot better to give unsolicited advice than receive it.
I often think, if wisdom traveled by ear, my kids wouldn’t have to go through what I did to learn. But the truth of life is that we don’t always learn from words. We need the mud to grow the lotus. We need to find our own way out. When we rush to advice—especially unsolicited advice, we stop looking at our own situation and apply our remodeling powers towards someone else. It is always easier to fix someone else’s life than our own. If only they would do this, or follow this diet, or stop that, then they’d be all set.
When we give advice, we reduce our capacity to be with suffering, our own and the other person’s. The practice of equanimity is the recognition that all beings suffer, despite my wishes for them. They are heirs of their karma and their happiness and suffering are made from their life choices. I cannot shift that no matter how hard I try to steer. And, they often do not follow our gems of advice. Almost four hundred years ago, the French physicist, philosopher, inventor, and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote, “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” To truly allow others their own journey, we must offer them space and time. Their wisdom and insights come from their lives and our task is to listen, to try and understand their struggles, and to love them, just as they are.
When we practice looking at our own desire to control, to fix, and manage. We can ask, “what’s keeping me from accepting what is? What’s bothering me about the suffering?” For most of us, what we can’t bear to see in others is the same stuff we can’t tolerate in ourselves. When we see something that calls for fixing, this is an invitation to become curious. We can look at that confusion, weakness, indecision, or failings in ourselves and ask, what does this feel like for me? Generally, there’s some shame beneath the behavior that fuels the rush to remove what we see as wrong. Never underestimate the power of shame.
This is not to say we lose our common sense and stop helping, or let people endanger their safety. If I go into my parents’ home and the gas burner is blazing away with nothing cooking. I don’t think, “Oh this decision is not what I’d choose. It may be a problem, but it’s their karma.” No, I turn the stove off and tell them what I saw to make them more aware of what’s happening. We do what is needed in the real world to keep people safe. I am speaking about being present with other’s choices that bring confusion, pain, or unwanted consequences.
Offering our own experience is different from unsolicited advice. We can share our struggles without attachment to outcome and without the intention of control and the energy of dissatisfaction found in advice. I often say, “advice is like manure. If I ask for it in my garden, it’s a wonderful gift that makes the flowers and vegetables grow. If I don’t, it’s a pile of poop in my living room.” Not a dainty simile, but I think it gets the point across.
Please use your social interactions with family and colleagues to pay attention to what comes up for you. What is it that you can’t tolerate in others and yourself? The old expression is so true, “you spot it, you got it.” What a different world it would be if we all paid attention to “what we got”—and let others do the same—and I need to follow my own advice.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
