Lies, gossip and fighting words

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 14, 2013

The third element of the Eightfold Path of Buddhism is “Right Speech.” What does “right speech” entail?

Right Speech

Today is the third part of the series I started last spring on the 8-fold path of Buddhism. Every week before I preach about something, the whole week of my life previous to the sermon feels like a lesson about that thing. “Right Speech” is the topic for this week, and for the past four days I haven’t been able to talk at all. Enforced silence is hard on me, but at least I didn’t do anything in the past four days that the Buddha said not to do.

Right Speech entails: “Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter.”

Usually I tell the truth. Except when I’m being nice to someone about the kind of music they like. Then I have been known to tell a truth that was a lie. One time when I used to work with Pat Jobe for our friend Charlie, I was on the phone with a nice fellow who was going on and on about bluegrass music. I can sing about four bluegrass songs, but if it’s on the radio I can listen to maybe one song before I have to change the station. Pat overheard me saying to the guy, “yeah, I have a special feeling in my heart for bluegrass music.” He started slapping his desk, laughing. He knew what that meant.

When we lie, we damage the bond between people. If you lie people don’t know who you are. If they don’t know who you are they can’t relate to you truly, openly. Lying makes us all sick, the one who lies, and the one who is lied to. We live in a culture of speech. All around us is talking. We read emails and ads and we watch TV and we talk to one another. Almost all ads are lies; almost all TV is lies of one sort or another. To say you will do something and then not follow through is a lie. I’m guilty of that one. Doing what you say you will do makes more happiness and less suffering. To find someone who speaks the truth to us is a treasure. To be a person who speaks the truth will make you a treasure.

Let me say something here. Buddhist teacher Eric Kolvig points out that the Buddha didn’t say “if you lie, you’re a bad person.” Buddhism is not a path of morality, of good and bad. It is a path of noticing, becoming aware. Instead of “good” and “bad,” there is “harmful, increasing the suffering in the world,” and “not harmful,” increasing peace in the world.”

Everyone wants to be happy. Almost everyone. The eight-fold path: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration, is the way to freedom from suffering, to peace of mind and happiness. If you notice yourself lying, don’t beat yourself up, don’t wallow in the delicious drama of being a bad person, just notice and gently wonder “What would this situation be like if I were to speak more truthfully?” Wondering is so much more effective than trying.

Abstaining from “divisive speech” is the next element of right speech. What is that? It’s anything that drives a wedge between us. If I gossip about her (over there) to you (over there) even if it’s true, then you know something about her that she doesn’t know you know, and you have to not let her know that you know it. If the connection between the two of you is like a road, it becomes difficult to travel a road with that big a boulder sitting in the middle of it. In one of the books I read this week, Rabbi Stephen Wylen says we shouldn’t say things that lower another in the estimation of one with whom you are speaking, unless you are giving a factual warning about someone to prevent harm or loss, and you do that with doubt, like “I don’t know if this person has changed, but he was abusive to his last wife, so you may want to keep your guard up for a while if you go out with him.”

It could be that just talking about someone who isn’t there can be divisive. The Buddhist teachers I read all talked about becoming mindful of talking about an absent third party. Not that it’s always harmful, but it often is, so it’s an interesting exercise to become aware of doing it.

The Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein tells of his experience with this practice: “For several months I decided not to speak about any third person; I would not speak to somebody about somebody else. No gossip. Ninety percent of my speech was eliminated. Before I did that, I had no idea that I had spent so much time and energy engaged in that kind of talking. It is not that my speech had been particularly malicious, but for the most part it had been useless.

“I found it tremendously interesting to watch the impact this experiment had on my mind. As I stopped speaking in this way I found that one way or another a lot of my speech had been a judgment about somebody else. By stopping such speech for a while, my mind became less judgmental, not only of others, but also of myself, and it was a great relief.” building.

The third element in the Buddha’s teaching about right speech is that we refrain from abusive speech. Even when driving? It makes us sick to heap abuse on other people, and it’s likely that we talk to ourselves that same way. That makes us sick for sure. So many hear abusive speech as children, and it sticks in your heart and begins to shout at you in your own voice. When people speak to you abusively, it tells you much more about them than it does about you. They are hurting, they are poisoned, and they can’t even see you clearly, much less speak to you in a way that is about you.

Sometimes we are tempted to tell the truth in a way that is abusive – just to let someone have it. Even when what we’re saying is true, if we using the truth as a weapon against someone, it can do harm. Hard truths should be said in love. Gently. With respect. With the willingness for the hard truths about yourself to be told as well.

In this congregation’s Relational Covenant, we agree to “speak with honesty, respect and compassion.” It’s an important balancing act to have compassion both for the person about whom you are talking and also the person to whom you are talking. In the South, the rule is that you can say nearly any mean thing you want to about someone as long as you say “bless her heart” afterward. I don’t know if you all know this rule or not, but it can be helpful. “He is so homely, bless his heart.”

“That whole family has trouble with the truth, bless their hearts. And they’re bad to drink.” I’m not sure the Buddha would recognize that as mitigating something tawdry you just said, though.

The last element of Right Speech, according to the Buddha’s teaching is abstaining from “Idle chatter.” I read a story about a man who decided he wouldn’t speak if it weren’t necessary, and he was silent for the next thirteen years. That made me mad. How do you decide what’s necessary? Telling your partner you love them every day at least once is necessary, in my opinion. It’s not a situation where you can say “Honey, I told you I love you when we got together and I’ll let you know if anything changes.” Asking someone how their day was is relationship strengthening. Is it necessary? Maybe that silent man wasn’t in any relationship. Maybe he didn’t even have a dog, or a friend. The wiccan teacher Starhawk, however, writes that talking about third parties is community. It’s okay in her book to tell stories about other people, as long as they are true and not harmful. It’s not useless speech to hear interesting stories about mountains someone else has climbed, solutions they have found to parenting dilemas, colorful ways they met partners, decorated homes, started businesses, got jobs, etc. How do you decide what’s “idle chatter?” Humph. Well, I know it when I hear it.

The Talmud says God spoke to the tongue and said “all the other parts of the body I have made standing up, but you I have made lying down, and I have built walls around you.” The word is powerful. It can create and it can destroy. Choose to create. Your inner wisdom will guide you.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776