by Prajna Piper
Almost all spiritual traditions include a code of morality, of ethical understanding and behavior. Right, or wise, or mindful speech is the third quality addressed in the Buddha’s eight-fold path, and the first of the qualities that have to do with ethics.
Wise speech is sometimes reduced to a few sentences – Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Of course there’s more to it than that – the practice of cultivating right speech can become extremely refined – but those three guidelines are always good to remember. I once heard a meditation teacher say that every time he’d taught on right speech he would hear later from a student who had been accosted in the parking lot, after the talk, by another student wanting to tell them what was wrong with them. This kind of confrontation may be honest, but it isn’t necessarily right speech.
Hearing someone teach about morality can feel ponderous, and that’s probably because we already have a pretty strong moral compass inside of ourselves. There may be unusual situations where we have to think about how we frame our view, or understand a bigger picture of what is really ethical, but for the most part, we know inside ourselves what moral behavior is. We know when we speak uncaringly to others. And we certainly know, by the way it feels, when someone speaks uncaringly to us.
In today’s culture, morality doesn’t apply to speech for a lot of people. There’s the out and out grossness of some of the TV news stations, or the way people will publicly express hatred, as an extreme example of that. But when we’re looking more closely, at our own personal morality, at a refinement and cultivation of our words and deeds, I think there’s also often a real reluctance to monitor our own speech. For reasons related to self-expression, or authenticity, or the simple pleasure of being spontaneous, we don’t want to exercise restraint. We want to be autonomous beings, free-wheeling, with personas and ways of our own. But this is not exactly how morality works. Morality is something that needs to be attended to, and, it’s important to remember that we aren’t autonomous, free-wheeling beings. For better or for worse, we’re in this life together.
Years ago, I was in a month-long mindful living program, held at the Insight Meditation Society, in Barre, MA, and the Buddhist teacher, Joseph Goldstein came in to talk to our group.
Joseph is a really big deal to a lot of people and our group teacher had told us to save our hard questions for him. Everyone in the group had tried to come up with something complex to inquire about, and we’d all failed. So instead we asked him what, in all his years of practice, stood out for him in the teachings, and he thought for a moment and said, ‘well, three things then.’
I’m a little annoyed with myself that I can’t remember what the first two were. I think they were the teachings on non-self and on impermanence. But I remember very distinctly that he then paused and said that the third thing, and that he had to include it because he’d seen over and over again how much suffering speech caused, was right, or mindful, speech.
Later, in that session, a loud noise was heard overhead, and someone said, “it’s an airplane.” And it probably was. But Joseph said, quietly, questioningly, “well, we don’t really know that, do we?” What had been an assumption had been stated as a fact.
Over the course of the month while I was at Barre, I had occasion to exchange a few words with Joseph, to observe him socially, and to see that he was taking a split second before answering people, even in casual conversation, that he was monitoring, very carefully, what was going to come out of his mouth. I remember being touched by how diligently he was practicing, and when I tell people about this, I always have to say that you might think this would make someone seem boring, or unnatural. But it didn’t. He was just practicing, very sincerely and humbly, training himself to consider his intention before speaking.
This spiritual life we are trying to live needs to be based on our values, our intentions. If we value kindness and honesty, generosity, consideration and restraint, these qualities need to be practiced in our speech as well as in our minds and in our actions.
The residents at San Francisco IYI have chosen to practice right speech as the practice of the month. May we all practice with sincerity and humility, for the benefit of all beings.
Prajna lives and practices at Integral Yoga Institute San Francisco.