Wise Speech

Our words have power.  After listening to a lecture on the subject from a Buddhist perspective, it is interesting how the reality of this is a part of the fabric of both Buddhism and Christianity.  Both seek to move us to reflect and reprogram our internal and external communications about our reality and our interpersonal interactions.  Oren J. Sofer at AudioDharma.org talks about the filtering down of the Buddha’s teaching to three to four words/thoughts.

• True Timely Affectionate  Beneficial
• True, Timely, Useful, Good Will (Donald Rothberg)
• Clear honest beautiful

Thich Nhat Hanh fleshes this out on his reflection on right speech as wise speech:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will  refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.” Thich Nhat Hanh from precept-4.html

This understanding of the power of speech is reminiscent for me of Luther’s positive approach to the eighth commandment, “you shall not bear false witness” ..

We should fear  and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander,  or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak  well of him, and put the best construction on everything.  Luther, Small Catechism

Luther continues this thought in the Large Catechism by pointing out that this is also simply an extension of the Golden Rule.  It is here that he also points out that we are called to be people of integrity upholding the integrity of others.

Oddly enough, I am also reminded of something Joyce Meyers said as I lighted momentarily on her program while channel surfing, which also relates to this.  The negative word or thought that we receive from others about another, can become a filter or lens through which we perceive that other person when we encounter them.  So that instead of approaching another as we knew them, or allowing ourselves to be neutral, we are either already looking for something negative in our encounter, or we actually relate to that person as though the negative were true.  In Luther’s words, the thought causes us to suspect the person’s integrity before we have even encountered them.  As a result we treat them as people with less integrity in the encounter.  We may even go so far as to spread the negative thought about that person to others.

From the perspective of the person receiving a negative, unwise, word–even if the word is a part of conjecture–it results in an emotion that is then subject to the negative spiral of thoughts which keep the negative emotion alive.  For example, someone says, “I don’t know if John likes you”.  It is conjecture.  But as the person hearing those words you may feel hurt and rejected, perhaps even angry.  You begin to obsess on questions like “Why doesn’t John like me?  What did I ever do to John?  I never did like John.  What is it about me that is unlikable?  Maybe I am unlikeable, I’m not this or that ”  The cycle is now perpetuated. And depending on your personality, you may find it hard to sleep, hard to concentrate on your job (especially if John is a fellow employee or in a senior position to you), it may even affect your relationships with the people who do like you as you react from a place of agitation.  You might think, “well I’ll go and ask John, but then why would John want to talk to me?  And even if he denies it, he might just be being polite.”   And when you next meet John, you give John the cold shoulder and there is an air of hostility which becomes realized should you deign to speak to him.  Meanwhile, John is completely clueless as to why someone he may have just met, or someone he considered a friend, is being so hostile.  And depending on John’s own sense of awareness, he may react in the same way, give you the cold shoulder, which just confirms your perception and you think, “Aha, see he doesn’t like me!”  And John having had that negative encounter with you now enters into his own spiral about his own likeableness and probably for the first time has the thought, “I don’t think I like that person.”  Along with the negative emotions,the anxiety, the fatigue,  the body begins to release chemicals and hormones related to the fight/flight response, and over time these chemicals can result in dis-ease becoming disease.

And the reality is that, in the words from the Tom Stoppard play “Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead”: there must have been a point where we could have just said no. And indeed there are a number of points, beginning with the person expressing the conjecture, our reception of the conjecture, our dwelling on the conjecture, our decision to see John through the filter of the conjecture, our reacting to John, John’s reaction to us, etc.  At any point we could have diverted the path of destruction that the conjecture would take.  With God’s help it really would boil down to holding on to Luther’s notion of defending our neighbour, and at any point in the spiral downward to stop and look at what we are thinking answering the question “is this communication true, timely, affectionate, or benefical?  Is it good will?  Is it clear, honest or beautiful? ” or thinking about it through the lens of Than’s reflection on wise speech.

Through mindfulness, or prayer (the stopping and reflecting), we can dis-empower the conjecture at any point along the way.  If we deal with the dis-ease of the thought, we also deal with the disease it can cause both in terms of our relationship with others and our own physical well-being.