Who Am I Anyway

Who Am I Anyway?

One way to find out who you are is to understand who a bodhisattva isn’t. The Diamond Sutra says, in chapter after chapter, starting in chapter three, that a bodhisattva does not entertain the idea of “a self, a person, a being, a soul” (atman, pudgala, sattva, jiva).

The question that arises on reading that phrase, when one gets past the erroneous idea that the repetition is meant solely as a teaching strategy, is why did the monk who authored this important sutra use those four phrases to describe the Self?  And how can I use that understanding of Self to relieve me of some of my sense of Self?

Master Ji Ru, our Abbot, pointed out in a recent class that the monk, or perhaps monks, who authored the Diamond Sutra was enlightened. Learning that about the author changed the whole perspective and meaning of the sutra for me. It gave me a fresh way of understanding who I am, or more accurately, who I am not, or even more accurately, both and neither.

The monk who authored this important wisdom (prajnaparamita) sutra used the phrase “a self, a person, a being, a soul” to describe us, here in samsara, from his perspective on the other shore. Once having had a self and renounced it he was looking back at the Self in others and seeing it and seeing it without delusion. The author was not someone in samsara describing a self from within the delusion of self. This is not a word game. Neither is it a rhetorical devise. Neither is it a linguistic strategy of some sort. That’s samsaric thinking. It is, instead, a simple description of what really is. And what was seen is that a self has these four aspects: a self, a person, a being, a soul.

The answer to the question, “Why did the author of the Diamond use these four phrases?” will take us a long way toward understanding the “a Self” so that we can deconstruct our Self in a way that lessens dukkha. It is, in fact, like the Four Noble Truths and all the other teachings, just another raft to make our journey to the other shore possible.

The author was using this phrasing to help us to understand our own deluded sense of Self, the four wrong views by which we define ourselves. From a samsaric point of view, our deluded understandings of “us” make Us seem real, solid, substantive, and abiding. But from an enlightened point of view, “a self, a person, a being, a soul” are seen for what they really are––“illusions, shadows, bubbles, dew.” Regardless of how much it appears so to us in samsara, we are not objectively real. “We” are fabrications created out of elements that are themselves empty.

By using this phrasing, “a self, a person, a being, a soul”, the author of the Diamond is telling us that deluded individuals, living in samsara, construct their sense of self  in these four ways. These are, in fact, the very words we use to trick ourselves into believing we are permanent entities.  Now they are being used to show us that there can be no such thing. Let’s look at each of the four separately.

A Self, Atman, “Ego Entity”

Our “Self” is the delusion we form through the operation of the five skandhas. “Self” is meant to indicate the artificial construct we create when we appropriate and identify with our sensory contacts. In Buddhism there is no belief in a self outside of the five skandhas.

The skandhas work like this: (1. Form) when we see something (2. Form) we develop a physical and emotional response to it, positive or negative, (3. Perception) we then label it, next (4. Volitional Formations) we create a story about it from past memory fragments, called seeds, and finally, (5. Consciousness) we appropriate and identify ourselves as that sensory contact “I see…whatever”. This is the ownership element. Ownership is when we take possession of a sense contact and define it as “I, me, my or mine.” This is the part of us that says we are simply the sum total of all our past sensory experiences.

When we realize that the five skandhas are impermanent and shunyata, we see how foolish it is to say: “I am the kind of person who…. And that weakens our ability to cling and attach. Which ends the dukkha, at least for me in that moment. Actually, we can stop this creation of Self at any of the five skandhas. We can shut our sense doors; not develop feelings about sense objects; stop labeling and naming; stop creating new volitional formations and stop relying on old habitual patterns retrieved from our seed consciousness. And, as already mentioned, we can stop appropriating and identifying, stop saying “I am the kind of person who (gets upset when he sees a big dog)” or “I am the kind of person who (gets anxious when the phone rings),” or whatever.

For more about the five skandhas, start with Peter della Santina’s introduction to the five aggregates (skandha is the Sanskrit word for aggregate). If you want to delve more deeply, I suggest comtemplatively working your way through Mathieu Boisvert’s short but intense book, The Five Aggregates, Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology. 

Both are also available in print editions.

A Person, Pudgala

A “Person” is “Us” as a social entity. It is the way we define ourselves relative to others and to the environment. A Person is our idea of Us as a permanent entity, separate and distinct from all other phenomena. Personhood is about establishing differences, the difference between self and other, the difference between me and a tree, and so on.

If we look at how we fabricate ourselves as a Self and as a Person, we can begin to see non-self and no-self––shunyata, for these fabrications of a Self and a Person are composites of elements that are themselves empty of any permanent and abiding nature. With this new right view, samsara’s grip on us is weakened, reducing the strength of our attachment to ourselves as a Person.

A Being, Sattva

A Being is the sense we have of ourselves as the same individual at all times. As a Being we believe that we must differentiate the us from the unity of the subject-object relationship, and segregate the experiencer from the experienced. Once we see how making ourselves into a Being causes us dukkha, we can stop differentiating ourselves in this way and move further along the path to the peace and tranquility of no-self and shunyata.

It takes enormous energy and attention in order to construct and maintain a Self, as a Person, and as a Being. That alone should alert us to its implausibility. But instead we work even harder to complete the illusion. And it seems we are not finished until we fabricate a “Soul and Lifespan”, a Jiva,  for our “selves.”

A Soul, A Lifespan, Jiva

A Jiva is generally thought of as a soul, that is, unifying life-giving force and spiritual entity, which persists in us, unchanged from conception (or at least birth) to death. It is this permanent, abiding aspect of ourselves, we generally think, which migrates from this life to the next. This is also how we identify with body and mind.

When the Buddha realized experientially that no phenomenon is permanent and abiding, he realized there can be no soul. Everything, after all, is conditioned. We too must learn to understand this, as the Buddha did, experientially, if we are to leave behind our jiva and its attendant dukkha and cross to the other shore.

 “Jiva” also has another meaning. It can be an entity that exists for a certain period of time. a Lifespan. My suspicion is that the author of the Diamond saw our Jivas as both a life-giving spiritual entity and a lifespan.

Conclusion

Clearly, in order to construct an “Us” we need to do a whole lot of work, First, we must develop a series of unexamined assumptions (atman). Then we must formulate a special use of the language to validate those assumptions (pudgala). Then we have to convert those assumptions into rigid beliefs (sattva). Finally, we give our rigid beliefs a new name. We call them a unifying, life-giving entity, which has a duration (jiva). And even after all this work, “We” are fragmented and fragile and dukkha.

Just look at all the mental and emotional contortions we need to go through in order to create this fictitious entity. For me, in my practice, anything that requires that much effort to create and maintain is suspect and problematic! Whether one views this from samsara, as we do, or from the other shore, as the author of the Diamond did, what other way is there to see all this than as nonsense?

That insight makes all clinging, attaching, protecting or defending, any attraction or aversion to anything conceived of as I or me or my or mine seem silly. It only serves to trap us in dukkha and keeps us in samsara.

The more clearly I see this trap, this delusion, the more difficult it is for it to arise in my mind, and, if it does arise, the more difficult it is for me to maintain the attachment. As soon as I realize that I am clinging or attaching to one of these senses of Me, the clinging and attaching weakens and then disappears. And as my “I” becomes weaker, the Buddha in me becomes stronger. Or put another way, my Buddhanature begins to shine where there was previously only fog.

This is the big Zen stick that the monk who wrote the Diamond Sutra is wielding for our benefit. Whappp!

Faith

Buddhist Faith, Believing in the Seen and See-able

We tend to think of faith as belief in something that cannot be proven. This type of faith is a conviction in the absence of evidence. We commonly call this “blind faith,” though more accurately it is “cognitive” faith.

If we look closely at the idea of faith, we can differentiate between “cognitive” and “affective” faith. To have faith in the cognitive sense is to believe something is true without being able to verify it. For example, tenets of cognitive faith might be a belief that the plagues of the Exodus stories actually occurred ancient Egypt, or a belief that the physical resurrection of Jesus actually happened as a historical event.

Interestingly, cognitive faith is generally rejected in Buddhism as not conducive to spiritual awakening. This is seen most emphatically in the often quoted Kalama Sutra AN 3.65    where the Buddha explains how to decide the veracity of a spiritual belief system.

Affective faith, on the other hand, refers to faith that arises from observation and reflection, to a sense of confidence and trust in a practice or a person or a certain set of values. This kind of faith is more experiential, or intuitive, than intellectual.

In Western Buddhism today faith (saddha) is understood in the affective sense, as confidence in the Buddha as a symbol of the potential of his beliefs; in his teachings, the Dharma; and in the spiritual community, the Sangha.

Why affective and not cognitive becomes somewhat clearer when we realize that the Buddha claimed to have discovered that certain thoughts, actions and practices lead to the cessation of suffering. Rather than having invented reality either speculatively or miraculously, and then exacting from us blind faith as payment for his revelation,  Buddha discovered something about reality, requiring nothing of us other than a willingness to do what he did and discover it ourselves. And as we see that the general principles work, we develop trust that the more subtle aspects of the teachings will also work.

In my life, faith in the Buddha, Dharma,  and Sangha (the Triple Gem) is the natural consequence of the practice. In other words, mine is affective faith, which comes from an examination, both on and off the cushion, of my experience with suffering.  I suggest you use your practice to do the same.  Generate faith in the practice from your practice by becoming aware of experience with the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in reducing and ending your suffering. See if your dukkha is weaker than it was. Is it fading away? Therein is the source of the faith that will sustain your practice.

When I saw, dramatically and profoundly how the practice had brought peace and happiness to my life, when I realized that the tools it gave me really did work to reduce dukkha, I understood the great value of the Sangha. It is the monastic sangha who are dedicating their lives to preserving the teachings for us all. And as I realized deeply that my own true nature already is enlightenment, I began to develop a reverence and appreciation for the Triple Gem from an unshakeable place inside my practice.

Without faith, I suggest, we cannot get to the other shore. For while the teachings can be secularized, and can be useful when pulled out of context and used, for example, to help us with an anxiety disorder, when we use the teachings simply to get what we want, rather than to end our suffering in the spiritual sense, we are using the teachings unwisely.  When our actions are not informed by wisdom, the raft stays securely anchored on the samsara shore. It is faith that allows us to lift the anchor and paddle our way to liberation on the other shore.

Being faith is so important, eventually we must ask, how can we strengthen our faith? I see two avenues for strengthening faith. The first is through meditation. The second is through developing a contemplative practice, starting with a contemplation of the four noble truths and then continuing with a contemplative study of key texts and sutras.

Graphically, it looks like this.

Practice: In a blog, all that can reasonably be said about anyone’s practice, especially as it relates to faith, is that it should neither be too loose nor too tight, as the Buddha suggested to the monk Sona in the Sona Sutta. And that the practitioner needs to meditate, as conditions permit, as energetically and diligently and effectively as his or her karma allows. Both of these suggestions will increase faith.

Contemplation: As to contemplation, a contemplative understanding of the four noble truths is always beneficial if faith is to be strengthened, as well as some study of dharma texts and sutras. But it isn’t possible in the context of a blog to suggest specific texts or scriptures for study. For advice on your meditation practice or on appropriate texts or teachings or sutras for contemplation, I suggest asking a capital “T” Buddhist Teacher. Strengthening faith strengthens and builds our intention for and our attention to our practice, giving us the critical tools needed to progress along the spiritual path.

EXERCISE: Consider where you are in your practice now in terms of (1) the strength of your faith, the amount of time and the materials in your contemplative practice, and (3) how much meditation you do and the type and effectiveness of your meditation. Place a dot inside the triangle to indicate where you are. Is that where you belong in terms of your understanding of your spiritual journey, in terms of your spiritual needs and growth, in terms of your karma? Do you need to develop or differently emphasize one or more of these three aspects? Discuss this with a Buddhist Teacher or spiritual friend, if possible, to see what might be most beneficial for you. 

Another Route to Freedom

Parsing This is Suffering

The first noble truth, when translated the way the Buddha said it, is: “This is suffering.”

Buddhism can, in a practical (skillful means) sense, be thought of as simply realizing the this of “This is suffering.” For once this is realized, there is no longer any clinging. In practice, the more we understand this as we walk the path to full realization, the less clinging we can do.

In my own life, the more profoundly I have grown to understand the this of “This is suffering,” the less and less strongly I have been able to crave and cling, not only to material stuff, but to the emotional stuff as well. Going, going and gone are so many of my material needs, and going, going, gone is so much of my moodiness and depression, the latter almost completely, that I am amazed. The more I have come to understand this, the more peaceful and happy my life has become.

The Buddha starts his explanation of dukkha in his first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta [SN 56.11], by simply listing eight types of dukkha: (1) birth, (2) aging, (3) disease, (4) death, (5) sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair, (6) being united with the unpleasant, (7) being separated from the pleasant, and (8) not getting what we desire.

Those eight are what is commonly understood as dukkha or suffering: birth, aging, disease, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair, being stuck with unpleasant things, being separated from pleasant things, and not getting what we want.

But the Buddha immediately expands his explanation, saying: “In brief, the five aggregates of clinging are dukkha".  Understanding this idea is central to developing a deeper understanding of our lives and ourselves. Colloquially speaking, we are the sum total of our sensory experiences, past and present, an amalgam of our five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, volitional formation and consciousness. We are the five aggregates, which are suffering. Ergo we are suffering.

So the Buddha is saying: everything we experience is dukkha. Now we’re beginning to get to the this in “This is suffering.”

All of our physical and mental experiences are included in the footprint of dukkha because they are all impermanent, all arising and ceasing from moment to moment. We see this on the cushion when we sit and observe ourselves, when we notice our consciousness arising singularly in each moment, constantly defining and redefining who we think we are.

Though we cling to the idea of “a self, a person, a living being, a life span,” to use the words of the Diamond Sutra, in fact it's the aggregates, and not us, that are born, grow old and die; it’s the aggregates that we are cling to.

The first noble truth, then, is the central and overriding characteristic of existence in samsara.

The pronoun this represents both what is realized and the one who realizes it. In other words, I am suffering from what I am and from what the world is, which constitutes what I am. All suffering, then, is my suffering. That's why THIS is suffering.

The ultimate cause of suffering, which is designated as this, is my way of being and the way of being of the world which constitutes my way of being. And that is the this of the first noble truth.

Exercises:

ONE: Peruse the meaning of each of the eight types of dukkha the Buddha lists in his first discourse and reflect on them contemplatively as dukkha:

1. Birth

Birth here means the period from conception to exiting the womb. Birth in itself is a painful experience. Being thrust out from the womb, being thrown out into the world without a choice, without any understanding is also traumatic–dukkha.

2. Aging

Aging is what happens from the moment something arises until it ceases–“birth, aging, and death” in scriptural jargon. In the more colloquial sense, we get older, weaker, our skin wrinkles, our sense faculties lose their sharpness, our hair turns gray, our memory fades and so . All this is dukkha.

3. Disease

Sickness, whether physical or mental, is suffering, dukkha.

4. Death

Dying in each moment is dukkha. Death at the end of this lifetime is also dukkha. The breaking up and dissolution of the body and the loss of the strongest attachment of all, the attachment to our breath, is for many the source of their deepest dukkha.

5. Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair

Sorrow is the despair caused when something unwanted occurs; lamentation is an expression of sadness, often expressed through weeping and crying; pain is a “hurting” bodily sensation; grief is any kind of trouble, from mild to intense; despair is the mental anguish that arises when all hope lost. All these are dukkha.

6. Being united with the unpleasant

Facing unpleasant situations and people we don't want to face is dukkha.

7. Being separated from the pleasant

These are pleasant and agreeable situations or people that we want to cling to, or hold on to; separation from these is dukkha.

8. Not getting what one desires

Generally we desire things that we think of as pleasurable, like being young and strong and healthy. But the natural course of phenomena is that we get old and weak; young and strong forever is not possible. All this is dukkha.

TWO: For Intermediate Students – This exercise was suggested in the Right Speech blog several weeks ago: Choose one full day to practice not saying "I," "me," "my," or "mine." (It’s suggested that you not do this on an "office or school day," as speech tends to become stilted for much of the day.)

While this exercise is certainly conducive to right speech, it is also profoundly effective, if you succeed in practicing it for a whole day, in demonstrating that dukkha is intrinsic to the five clinging aggregates; i.e., in showing the this of “This is suffering” IS suffering.

THREE: For Advanced Students – Contemplate how the this of “This is suffering” relates to ignorance (avijja), the first of the twelve links of dependent origination, and the implications of that connection for easing one’s everyday dukkha as well as for liberation. Just as the second, third and fourth noble truths are implicit in the first, and if, as this question is suggesting, so is the first link of dependent origination, then the this of “This is suffering” is the dharma. Unraveling this connection is a contemplative task of considerable profundity which is suggested for advanced students.

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Generosity, It's Our Original Nature

Generosity (Dana) Is Not A Choice

Imagine that you no longer have any defilements, that you no longer have any negative mind-states, that you no longer have any self-centered thoughts or wrong views, that all your negative emotions–from irritation to depression–are gone. What would be left? I suggest you would be left with lovingkindness and compassion–and their attendant wholesome mind-states. Now further consider that you would spend your days just peacefully helping others, calmly doing things to benefit others. There you have it: that is the perfection of dana, the telos of the first paramita.

Generosity, giving, charity, dana in Pali, isn’t a choice. Dana is our default setting. The reason we are not living lives of perfected dana, of selfless giving is simply because our defilements are blocking that pathway.

There are two approaches to dana which are useful to contemplate as we practice the paramitas. The first is to divide giving into material giving, spiritual giving, and the giving of no-fear. Less well known is the division of dana into the giving of material things, which is the narrowest sense of this practice, the giving of perfection, which results from perfecting the paramitas of morality and patience, and the gift of the dharma, which arises when effort, concentration, and wisdom are perfected.

How important is dana? It is the first and, as Master Ji Ru says, most important of the six paramitas. As Vasubandhu explains, the perfection of giving includes all the others paramitas. And the Diamond Sutra not only advocates dana as the essential behavior for a Bodhisattva, but it begins its explanation of how we can master our thinking and actions to become bodhisattvas by explaining (in chapter four) the spirit in which we should give:

…when a Bodhisattva practices generosity, he does not rely on any object–that is to say he does not rely on any form, sound, smell, taste, tactile object, or dharma–to practice generosity. That is the spirit in which a Bodhisattva should practice generosity, not relying on signs.

The Diamond Sutra is saying that dana is the inherent, everyday practice for a capital “B” Bodhisattva, for an enlightened being, and that dana is the point of departure for the Bodhisattva’s thoughts and actions.

The implication of dana, then, is that small “B” bodhisattvas, those of us who are committed to walking the Buddhist Path, should emulate the selfless giving behavior of the big “B” Bodhisattvas, those that have already reached the other shore. In other words, there are behavioral models to follow so that we can understand and progress along the Path, and progress on our spiritual journey to liberation.

When a defilement arises, the dharma teaches us that we should replace it with its antidote. (See the first exercise below.) If we notice that we are feeling irritated or angry, for example, we could choose to immediately reset our minds to patience. As we can only “be” one thing at a time, (we see this on the cushion when we notice the arising of our consciousness in the model of the five skandhas) we cannot be both angry and patient, then patience becomes the new mind-state. The unwholesome is abandoned and replaced by the wholesome.

This is right effort in action. Right effort is abandon and refrain to let go of the defilement and refrain from producing conditions that would allow it to arise again: and then to develop and maintain, develop a wholesome mind-state in its place and maintain the conditions for the new wholesome mind-state to define us.

In one of our classes in Chicago, we discussed using dana somewhat untraditionally as an antidote for anger. The traditional antidote for anger is patience, patience being the Buddhist opposite of anger. But since anger arises in such tight connection with greed, from not getting what we want, dana can also be cultivated as an antidote for anger. Here’s what happened:

One student described a particularly difficult meeting at his office in which he became furious with his boss. When he left the meeting, he slipped out of the office to go for a walk and calm down. As he was walking and “steaming,” he noticed a particularly impoverished looking homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. Remembering our discussion about replacing anger with dana, he walked to a nearby supermarket, and still angry, but slightly less so, he says, he went inside and spent half an hour buying every kind of food he thought would be appropriate for someone who was homeless—mostly foods that were shelf-stable (not requiring refrigeration “once opened”) and well-packaged. As he left the supermarket with two big bags of groceries, he said he noticed that all the anger was gone and a sense of contentment had replaced it. He gave the groceries to the man on the street and returned to the office clear spirited and clear headed.

What we see here is that dana is the antidote for all three of the major poisons: greed, anger, and delusion, the three mind-states that lead us to unwholesome activity and suffering. And that makes dana the antidote for every defilement, which explains it prominence in the Diamond Sutra and on the list of the paramitas.

In the Japanese Soto Zen tradition, the repentance chant goes like this:

All my ancient twisted karma,

Born from beginningless greed, anger, and delusion

Through body, speech and mind

I now fully avow.

For those of us seeking to change the direction of their karmic thrust, seeking to renounce all our ancient twisted karma, practicing dana is the answer. Not the only, but arguably the most critical answer, for dana is the enlightened being within us, the Buddha we all already are.

Further, if a Bodhisattva is defined as one with a mind of unmitigated compassion (albeit informed by wisdom) for all sentient beings, then dana, giving, is the actuation of the Bodhisattva ideal.

Dana is also the path to the realization of the “threefold purity”:gift, giver, recipient; no difference. And that is what makes a little “b” bodhisattva into a big “B” Bodhisattva.

So initially we do choose dana, but as our defilements decrease in strength and number and our threefold purity blossoms, dana arises spontaneously from deep within us. It is our original nature. We give selflessly because our only desire is to act for the benefit of others. We are made of compassion and our compassion actuates as giving, dana.

Learn More About Dana:

Here are five essays on dana selected by Bhikkhu Bodhi http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel367.html

Exercise:

ONE: Replacing a Defilement with an Antidote – When you notice you are becoming frustrated or irritated or angry or mean or hateful, or that you have become one of these, do something generous. The stronger the defilement, the more generous the action. You can be generous materially, as in the anecdote above; or spiritually; or generous in the giving of no-fear.

TWO: Peruse Chapter Four of the Diamond Sutra. (In our classes we use Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation from his The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion, only available in print editions). Contemplate its meaning and implications. Search online for commentaries on the Diamond Sutra and reflect on what each has to say in explaining this chapter.

Consider the authorship. (1) Was the author in samsara or nirvana when the sutra was written? and (2) How do each of those two possibilities affect the way we might understand the text.

Add your understandings and realization to comments at the bottom of the blog so others can gain support from your practice.

Comments: Click on the comments box at the bottom of the blog to read or post a comment.

Right Speech

So much of our dukkha is caused by wrong speech that it is a beneficial practice to set aside some time periodically for examining right speech, contemplatively and in practice.

Here are some notes I culled from the web on Right Speech (samma vacca) by three American Buddhist teachers, followed by two exercises developed in our classes that have proved to be of significant benefit to our students in understanding ourselves on a deeper level by using right speech. The dark-red colored text, which I added, were ideas that were used in class for discussion relative to our own practices of Right Speech.

From a book on The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi:

Right speech is

• No lying
• No slandering (damaging, divisive, demeaning)
• No harsh speech (angry or vulgar)
• No idle chatter (gossip or small talk)

There is both a negative and a positive side to each. The negative side is abstaining from the “offense,” the positive side is speaking its opposite: so not lying but speaking the truth. The determinative factor behind a “transgression” is the intention.

(1) Abstaining from false speech (Speaking the truth)

Herein someone avoids false speech and abstains from it. He speaks the truth, is devoted to truth, reliable, worthy of confidence, not a deceiver of people.

If one speaks something false believing it to be true, there is no breach of the precept as the intention to deceive is absent.

Though the deceptive intention is common to all cases of false speech, lies can appear in different guises depending on the motivating root, whether greed, hatred, or delusion. Greed as the chief motive results in the lie aimed at gaining some personal advantage for oneself or for those close to oneself -- material wealth, position, respect, or admiration. With hatred as the motive, false speech takes the form of the malicious lie, the lie intended to hurt and damage others. When delusion is the principal motive, the result is a less pernicious type of falsehood: the irrational lie, the compulsive lie, the interesting exaggeration, lying for the sake of a joke.

(2) Abstaining from slanderous speech (Avoiding malicious talk)

He avoids slanderous speech and abstains from it. …he unites those that are divided; and those that are united he encourages. Concord gladdens him, he delights and rejoices in concord; and it is concord that he spreads by his words.

Slanderous speech is speech intended to create enmity and division, to alienate one person or group from another. The motive behind such speech is generally aversion, resentment of a rival's success or virtues, the intention to tear down others by verbal denigrations. Other motives may enter the picture as well: the cruel intention of causing hurt to others, the evil desire to win affection for oneself, the perverse delight in seeing friends divided.

The root of hate makes the unwholesome kamma already heavy enough, but since the action usually occurs after deliberation, the negative force becomes even stronger because premeditation adds to its gravity. When the slanderous statement is false, the two wrongs of falsehood and slander combine to produce an extremely powerful unwholesome kamma.

The opposite of slander, as the Buddha indicates, is speech that promotes friendship and harmony. Such speech originates from a mind of lovingkindness and compassion. It wins the trust and affection of others.

(3) Abstaining from harsh speech (Gentle, comforting and supportive speech)

He avoids harsh language and abstains from it. He speaks such words as are gentle, soothing to the ear, loving, such words as go to the heart, and are courteous, friendly, and agreeable to many.

Harsh speech is speech uttered in anger, intended to cause the hearer pain. The three main types are:

• Abusive speech: scolding, reviling, or reproving another angrily with bitter words.
• Insulting: hurting another by ascribing to him some offensive quality which detracts from his dignity.
• Sacrasm: speaking to someone in a way which ostensibly lauds him, but with such a tone or twist of phrasing that the ironic intent becomes clear and causes pain.

The main root of harsh speech is aversion, assuming the form of anger. Since the defilement in this case tends to work impulsively, without deliberation, the transgression is less serious than slander and the karmic consequence generally less severe.

The ideal antidote is patience -- learning to tolerate blame and criticism from others, to understand their suffering, to respect differences in viewpoint, to endure abuse without feeling compelled to retaliate.

The Buddha calls for patience even under the most trying conditions:

Even if, monks, robbers and murderers saw through your limbs and joints, whosoever should give way to anger thereat would not be following my advice. For thus ought you to train yourselves: "Undisturbed shall our mind remain, with heart full of love, and free from any hidden malice; and that person shall we penetrate with loving thoughts, wide, deep, boundless, freed from anger and hatred."

(4) Abstaining from idle chatter (Remaining Silent)

He avoids idle chatter and abstains from it. (1) He speaks at the right time, (2) in accordance with facts, (3) speaks what is useful, (4) speaks of the dharma and the discipline; his speech is like a treasure, uttered at the right moment, (5) accompanied by reason, (6) moderate and full of sense.

Idle chatter is pointless talk, speech that lacks purpose or depth. Such speech communicates nothing of value, but only stirs up the defilements in one's own mind and in others.

The Buddha advises that idle talk should be curbed and speech restricted as much as possible to matters of genuine importance. We should be mindful not to let the conversation stray into pastures where the restless mind, always eager for something sweet or spicy to feed on, might find the chance to indulge its defiling propensities.

The traditional exegesis of abstaining from idle chatter refers only to avoiding engagement in such talk oneself. But today it might be of value to expand our understanding to avoid exposure to the idle chatter constantly bombarding us through the new media of communication which, naively accepted as "progress," threaten to blunt our sensitivities to what is right, including sources of amusement and needless information like social networking, geographic cell phone check-ins, and inconsequential texting.

From a dharma talk on right speech by Pat Phelan

In Returning to Silence Katagiri Roshi discusses Dogen’s teaching on this saying, "Kind speech is not merely speaking with an ingratiating voice, like a cat purring...[this] very naturally, consciously or unconsciously, is trying to get a favor by fawning or flattering. This is not kind speech. Kind speech is not the usual sense of kindness. It can appear in various ways, but ...we should remember that it must constantly be based on compassion.... Under all circumstances that compassion is always giving somebody support or help or a chance to grow."

Katagiri went on to say, “In working with the precepts, Mahayana Buddhism tends to emphasize this spirit of compassion rather than adhering to the literal meaning of the precept.”

By not indulging in or listening to such things as lying, back-biting, harsh speech or gossip, we can establish a link between our mental activity and our conduct or between Right Thought and Right Action, two other aspects of the Eight-Fold Path.

When Buddhism was established, communication was almost exclusively through the spoken word. But, in our culture Right Speech really means "Right Communication" and it includes all forms of communication such as television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, advertising and, of course, the internet. So, Right Speech means using communication as a way to further our understanding of ourselves and others and as a way to develop insight.

In Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, Jack Kornfield suggests practicing with Right Speech by trying to speak from the heart, and by avoiding gossip both negative and positive. This means not talking about people or talking behind their backs, but speaking directly to them. Sometimes this is called as no third party information. If you are irritated or having a problem with someone or even when you have something positive to express, the practice is to speak directly with the person involved, not to talk about it to someone else. [Not speaking about people who are not in the room.]

I think one of the characteristics of speech is that by talking to others about someone else, we have a tendency to reduce the fullness of that person to a category. So, the person becomes "that" kind of person. You know, "what would you expect from someone like that?" It is sort of like taking one frame from a movie and using the picture of that instant to be the whole person, freezing both our opinion of them as well as the way we respond to them. I think the more we talk about someone with a third party, the more our opinion becomes solidified, and we mistake this solidity for reality. So, speech can be a conditioning agent whereby we lose our freedom of both perception and response. We, ourselves, become fixed and unable to grow out of a particular opinion of and response to another person. I think this is how our long-term relationships become so conditioned and predictable.

Of course, speech takes place in the field of relationships. Another way to work with speech is to try to express your feelings or experience in such a way that doesn't assign blame or judgment. For example, instead of saying something like, "you made me angry" or "that makes me angry or sad or depressed or whatever" which almost carries the assumption that whatever was done, was done with the intention of making you feel a certain way; instead this can be expressed as, "when you do such and such or when such and such happens, I feel hurt or angry" which communicates how you are feeling. This way you can express what you are experiencing without holding others responsible for your state of mind. When we are able to do this, something shifts–there is a kind of independence from our emotional states. They are still there but not so dominating because their source no longer seems like something external or outside our control.

Another meaning of right speech is speech which is free of dogmatic assertions or hypnotic suggestions (which actually sounds like a good description of advertising).

I don't know if it is actually harder to maintain Right Speech, or if I make less effort in that area. So much of speech is unconscious or a continuation of our stream of thought. I find that I use speech more than anything else to justify my actions and elicit support for my point of view.

The Lankavatara Sutra was a popular text in 6th century China at the time of Bodhidharma when Zen was first taking form. According to the Lankavatara Sutra, words rise with discrimination as their cause. I'd like to emphasize this, words come into being with discrimination as their basis. Language or words arise with conceptualization or discrimination. This means that anytime we are engaged in language whether thinking, speaking, reading, writing or hearing others talk, our discriminative consciousness is automatically engaged. And language can never be separated from discrimination. I think this is one of the reasons we have the guideline during sesshin prescribed 10-day retreats twice a year]of no reading, no writing, and no unnecessary talking. During sesshin when we sit period after period of zazen, we have a greater opportunity to disengage from discursive thinking; and thinking, reading, speaking, or hearing others talk immediately brings us back to discrimination. This is why it is so important to maintain silence during sesshin both for ourselves and for others.

Several years ago, my mother-in-law died at her home in Virginia. Although she had been deteriorating both mentally and physically for more than two years, it seemed that she suddenly got worse. When we heard that she was dying, we went to be with her. At that point, she was already "out of her senses," by that I mean that I had no idea what she was seeing and hearing and feeling except it was clear to me that it wasn't what I was seeing and hearing. I sat with her on her last afternoon through the night until she died the next morning.

In addition to speech being linked to discriminative consciousness, speech is also an outflow. The Sanskrit word is ásrava, and Thich Nhat Hanh translates it as energy leak. When we begin to develop concentration during a longer sitting, our concentrative energy will leak through speech. Not that we should be clinging to our concentration, but you can watch it and feel it dissipate with chatter. This is also true in our daily activity. Speech requires energy.

Conscious speech is a rich practice, where we not only practice awareness of what we say and how we say it; but at a deeper level we can begin to notice the impulse, the driving force that propels us into speech and how our state of mind and our energy are affected before, during, and after speaking. This practice shifts the precepts from being a standard used to modify our behavior to a way of working with our state of mind, the source of all speech.

From Thanissaro Bhikkhu

As my teacher once said, "If you can't control your mouth, there's no way you can hope to control your mind.' This is why right speech is so important in day-to-day practice.

Right speech, explained in negative terms, means avoiding four types of harmful speech: lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth); divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people); harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person's feelings); and idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all).

Notice the focus on intent: this is where the practice of right speech intersects with the training of the mind. Before you speak, you focus on why you want to speak. This helps get you in touch with all the machinations taking place in the committee of voices running your mind. If you see any unskillful motives lurking behind the committee's decisions, you veto them. As a result, you become more aware of yourself, more honest with yourself, more firm with yourself. You also save yourself from saying things that you'll later regret. In this way you strengthen qualities of mind that will be helpful in meditation, at the same time avoiding any potentially painful memories that would get in the way of being attentive to the present moment when the time comes to meditate.

In positive terms, right speech means speaking in ways that are trustworthy, harmonious, comforting, and worth taking to heart. When you make a practice of these positive forms of right speech, your words become a gift to others. In response, other people will start listening more to what you say, and will be more likely to respond in kind. This gives you a sense of the power of your actions: the way you act in the present moment does shape the world of your experience. You don't need to be a victim of past events.

For many of us, the most difficult part of practicing right speech lies in how we express our sense of humor. Especially here in America, we're used to getting laughs with exaggeration, sarcasm, group stereotypes, and pure silliness — all classic examples of wrong speech. If people get used to these sorts of careless humor, they stop listening carefully to what we say. In this way, we cheapen our own discourse. Actually, there's enough irony in the state of the world that we don't need to exaggerate or be sarcastic. The greatest humorists are the ones who simply make us look directly at the way things are.

Expressing our humor in ways that are truthful, useful, and wise may require thought and effort, but when we master this sort of wit we find that the effort is well spent. We've sharpened our own minds and have improved our verbal environment. In this way, even our jokes become part of our practice: an opportunity to develop positive qualities of mind and to offer something of intelligent value to the people around us.

So pay close attention to what you say — and to why you say it. When you do, you'll discover that an open mouth doesn't have to be a mistake.

From The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Deep listening is the foundation of Right Speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it will not be mindful, because we'll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person.

This reminds us that our speech is not just our speech. Communication is something that happens between people. We might think of speech as something we give to others, and if we think of it that way, what is the quality of that gift?

Exercises:

ONE: Cover caller ID on your phone and cell phone for a week. It won't take long to notice how this stops your defiled, discriminating mind from wrong speech, both in your words and tone. And your family and friends will notice too.

TWO: Choose one full day to practice not saying "I," "me," "my," or "mine." It's suggested that you not do this on an "office day," if you work in an office. Students who were able to maintain a full day of no I-me-my-mine noticed a significant reduction in their dukkha because of the lack of appropriation and identification, which is how we actuate the fifth skandha.