Idle talk. We can talk all day long. “Blah blah blah…” Hopefully, we try and watch our speech a little, like watch the topics we talk about, and the amount of talk we do.

You can tell when you are on the phone with some people that they are talking to you and also doing a few other things. They talk very well, but you wonder how much they are really understanding the conversation.

If you sit down to have a conversation then it has got to be something interesting or you are not going to keep sitting there. If it is something interesting, then hopefully it is something worthwhile. We should try and have conversations where there is real sharing with other people.

That does not mean all our conversations must be heart-to-heart and meaningful discussions. But at least in our minds we can try and relate it to the Dharma in one way or another and be careful about the topics we talk about. Whatever we talk about usually comes to us in our meditation later.

That is why we keep silent during retreats, because when you talk before you sit down and meditate, you will remember the conversation, and think: “I forgot to tell them that.” or, “I should have said this…” or, “They said that, I wonder what they really meant by that…” The mind starts spinning off in meditation to a conversation of idle talk that we just had.

There are certain times, certain circumstances, and with certain people where the way you connect is just by chit-chatting. If you do that, just be aware that that is what you are doing. Have a specific reason why you are doing it. Do it for only a certain amount of time, and do not spend hours, or even an hour doing it because your whole life can go by, and you do not even remember what you talked about the next day. It is information overload.

The amount of time we can spend talking about food just amazes me. When you go to visit family, you sit for hours talking about what restaurant you are going to, what food you are going to cook, and what you like. When you sit down to eat the food that you have just talked about for hours, you are still talking with each other so you are not really tasting the food that you just got done talking about.

We should also monitor how long we talk. We have all been on the phone with somebody who just cannot be quiet. We never feel like that is us. But maybe other people do, and they wish we would be quiet after a while because we are going blah blah blah, on and on, and repeating ourselves, telling the same old stories about this and that like we have told the last time.

That does not mean to just shut up completely, rather be careful and aware of who we are talking to, about what topic, and for what purpose.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!