Buddhism And 12 Steps: Right Speech (Episode 14)

Right Speech is the first of the Buddha's Four Ethical Actions, taught in the Noble Eightfold Path. Today's lesson ends with a suggested Mindfulness Meditation on Right Speech. Spiritual Recovery can be enhanced with 12 Step and Buddhist teachings.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

I'm your host,

Chris McDuffie.

Welcome to Spiritual Sobriety.

Today we will explore Right Speech,

The third of Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path suggestions to help end our suffering and cultivate joy and happiness for ourselves and others.

First I'd like to thank all of you for helping us just surpass our first 500 followers worldwide.

I am very happy that so many of you have found this weekly podcast series helpful to your spiritual journey.

Today's topic focuses on the third of the Noble Truths,

But remember that Right Speech is also the first of the four practices of ethical conduct.

As a reminder,

The first two suggestions of the Noble Eightfold Path Truths are Right Wisdom and Right Thought.

These are specifically offered by the Buddha to cultivate wisdom.

Remember too that the three chief objectives of the entirety of the eight Noble Truths help us to cultivate wisdom,

Ethical conduct,

And mindfulness.

From a 12-step recovery perspective,

You might like to see the similarities between steps 3,

9,

10,

And 11 and the Noble Eightfold Path,

Which again is called the Middle Way.

I tried to introduce as many Buddhist scholars as possible here on Spiritual Sobriety to help introduce scholars for you to explore on your own.

It would be very hard to find anyone better than Jack Kornfield,

Joseph Goldstein,

And Lamas Suryadas to help teach us to study the Noble Eightfold Path.

Today's lesson on Right Speech will reflect upon a series of ten talks entitled Eightfold Path for the Householder presented by Jack Kornfield,

As well as direct quotes from the Buddha himself.

You will recall that Buddha's teachings and lessons are called Dharma,

Which is one of the Three Jewels of the Three Jewels of Buddhism.

In the Dharma or the Sutra teachings,

The Buddha defined Right Speech as,

Abstaining from lying,

From divisive speech,

From abusive speech,

And idle chatter.

Remember that the Buddha was teaching to illiterate masses 500 years before the birth of Christ.

Although Buddha's written teachings are collected in what we call the Dharma or the Sutras,

Much of his teachings were taught orally,

And you will often see him numbering his lessons so that they would be easily remembered.

That's why you see his teachings entitled,

The Four Noble Truths,

The Eightfold Path,

The Eight Viscissitudes of Life,

Etc.

The Buddha would typically introduce a lesson and then reinforce his teachings with what might be called subsets that in turn were also numbered.

So after the Buddha introduced this rather simple and direct explanation of what Right Speech is,

He then goes deeper to explain the many nuances of what appears to be at first a rather simple suggestion.

Again Buddha's teachings on Right Speech begins with,

Abstaining from lying,

From divisive speech,

From abusive speech,

And from idle chatter.

The Buddha then introduces what's called the Five Keys to Right Speech to teach a deeper lesson.

The Five Keys to Right Speech is,

Quote,

Right Speech is spoken at the right time.

It is spoken in truth.

It is spoken affectionately.

It is spoken beneficially.

It is spoken with a mind of good will.

Wow,

The plot thickens.

Remember that for Right Speech to be chosen by the individual,

The Buddha teaches that we must practice all three of the chief aims of the Noble Eightfold Path at once,

Beginning with Right View.

He stated,

And how is Right View the forerunner to Right Speech?

One discerns Wrong Speech as Wrong Speech and Right Speech as Right Speech.

One tries to abandon Wrong Speech and to enter Right Speech.

This is one's Right Effort.

One is mindful to abandon the Wrong Speech and to enter and remain in the Right Speech.

This is one's Right Mindfulness.

Thus these three qualities,

Right View,

Right Effort,

And Right Mindfulness,

Run and circle around Right Speech.

I don't know about you,

But for me,

The more the Buddha discusses the many aspects of Right Speech,

This one objective appears more and more difficult to perfect.

Luckily for us in Buddhism,

Just as in 12-step spiritual recovery efforts,

We can practice progress not perfection.

Look again at the key action verbs that the Buddha uses.

Abandon Right Speech.

Enter Right Speech.

Here we have the image of the path or the middle way that represents all of Buddhist psychology.

We are using mindfulness to remain aware of our choices before us every moment.

We will either abandon or enter the right path during every situation before us.

To me,

This relates closely to step 11,

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him,

Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.

For me and my daily practices of spiritual sobriety,

I can choose to see God as a loving kind power,

A power that only wants me to love myself and others in a non-dualistic,

Unconditional manner.

Step 3 suggests made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

Since both Buddhism and 12-step recovery are spiritual pathways,

Both pathways ask me to consider how am I speaking to others and how am I speaking to myself.

We spend most of the day thinking thoughts about ourselves and others.

These thoughts are considered statements or speech even if I don't open my mouth and verbally tell you my anger or jealousy or thoughts of thinking that I am less than or better than the other.

Research has shown that our nonverbal cues represent up to 94% of all of our collective speech.

That means that the listener is viewing our nonverbal cues that literally speak louder than our words themselves or our verbal silence.

Gandhi said,

I have only three enemies.

My favorite enemy,

The one most easily influenced for the better is the British Empire.

My second enemy,

The Indian people is far more difficult.

But my most formidable opponent is a man called Mahatnas K.

Gandhi.

With him I seem to have very little influence.

So spiritual sobriety means we are practicing the skill of insight of our verbal thoughts and our verbal speech and our nonverbal cues.

And per Gandhi's quote,

We need to begin with seeing how compassionate our thoughts are about ourselves.

From what might be called a non-theistic or non-religious viewpoint,

The Buddha declares the importance of living a noble life afforded by one's actions of cultivating the wisdom to see,

Decide and act from love.

Or as Buddha more powerfully stated as he reflected on the entirety of his teachings of right speech,

If you were to engage repeatedly in right speech,

You would outshine even the sun and the moon.

So I leave you today to contemplate or meditate on your current thoughts as speech that you are telling yourself about yourself and about others.

This practice,

Practiced often throughout each day,

Helps me practice my awareness of how I have been judging myself as less than or better than others,

Which results in me feeling lonely,

Isolated,

Anxious and depressed.

Practice like this helps me unhook from the non-judgments and judgmental speech and then release myself from it.

I hope you have a wonderful week.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you!
You have given me a lot to think about.