The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

Chapter 12

Right Speech 

"Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating 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 am determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not 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 am determined to make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small."

This is the Fourth Mindfulness Training, and it offers a very good description of Right Speech (samyag vac).

In our time, communication techniques have become very sophisticated. It takes no time at allt o send news to the other side of the planet. But at the same time, communication between individuals has become very difficult. Fathers cannot talk to sons and daughters. Husbands cannot talk to wives, nor partners to partners. Communication is blocked. We are in a very difficult situation, not only between countries but person to person. Practicing the Fourth Mindfulness Training is very important. The classical explanation of Right Speech is: 

(1) Speaking truthfully. When something is green, we say it is green,and not purple. 

(2) Not speaking with a forked tongue. We don't say one thing to one person and something else to another. Of course, we can describe the truth in different ways to help different listeners understand our meaning, but we must always be loyal to the truth. 

(3) Not speaking cruelly. We don't shout, slander, curse, encourage suffering, or create hatred. Even those who have a good heart and don't want to hurt others sometimes allow toxic words to escape from their lips. In our mind are seeds of Buddha and also many fetters or internal formations (samyojana). When we say something poisonous, it is usually because of our habit

energies. Our words are very powerful. They can give someone a complex, take away their purpose in life, or even drive them to suicide. We must not forget this. 

(4) Not exaggerating or embellishing. We don't dramatize unnecessarily, making things sound better, worse, or more extreme than they actually are. If someone is a little irritated, we don't say that he is furious. The practice of Right Speech is to try to change our habits so that our speech arises from the seed of Buddha that is in us,and not from our unresolved, unwholesome seeds.

Right Speech is based on Right Thinking. Speech is the way for our thinking to express itself aloud. Our thoughts are no longer our private possessions. We give earphones to others and allow them to hear the audiotape that is playing in our mind. Of course, there are things we think but do not want to say, and one part of our consciousness has to play the role of editor. If there is something we think we will be criticized for saying, the editor will censor it.

Sometimes when a friend or a therapist asks us an unexpected question, we are provoked into telling the truth we wanted to hide.

Sometimes, when there are blocks of suffering in us, they may manifest as speech (oractions) without going through the medium of thought. Our suffering has built up and can no longer be repressed, especially when we have not been practicing Right Mindfulness. Expressing our suffering can harm us and other people as well, but when we don't practice Right Mindfulness, we may not know what is building up inside us. Then we say or write things we did not want to say,and we don't know where our words came from. We had no intention of saying something that could hurt others, yet we say such words. We have every intention of saying only words that bring about reconciliation and forgiveness, but then we say something very unkind. To water seeds of

peace in ourselves, we have to practice Right Mindfulness while walking, sitting, standing, and so on. With Right Mindfulness, we see clearly all of our thought sand feelings and know whether this or that thought is harming or helping us. When our thoughts leave our mind in the form of speech, if Right Mindfulness continues to accompany them, we know what we are saying and whether it is useful or creating problems.

Deep listening is at 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 bespeaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person. In the Lotus Sutra, we are advised to look and listen with the eyes of compassion. Compassionate listening brings about healing. When someone listens to us this way, we  feel some relief right away. A good therapist always practices deep,compassionate listening. We have to learn to do the same in order to hear the people we love and restore communication with them.

When communication is cut off, we all suffer. When no one listens to us or understands us, we become like a bomb ready to explode. Restoring communication is an urgent task. Sometimes only ten minutes of deep listening can transform us and bring a smile back to our lips. The Bodhisattva Kwan Yin is the one who hears the cries of the world. She has the quality of listening deeply, without judging or reacting. When we listen with our whole being, we can defuse a lot of bombs. If the other person feels that we are critical of what they are saying, their suffering will not be relieved. When psychotherapists practice Right Listening, their patients have the courage to say things they have never been able to tell anyone before. Deep listening nourishes both speaker and listener.

Many of us have lost our capacity for listening and using loving speech in our families. It may be that no one is capable of listening to any one else. So we feel very lonely even within our own families. That is why we have to go to a therapist, hoping that she is able to listen to us. But many therapists also have deep suffering within. Sometimes they cannot listen as deeply as they would like. So if you really love someone, train yourself to be a listener. Be a therapist. You may be the best therapist for the person you love if you know how to train yourself in the art of deep,compassionate listening. You must also use loving speech. We have lost our capacity to say things calmly. We get irritated too easily. Every time we open our mouths, our speech becomes

sour or bitter. We know it's true. We have lost our capacity for speaking with kindness. This is the Fourth Mindfulness Training. This is so crucial to restoring peaceful and loving relationships. If you fail in this training, you cannot succeed in restoring harmony, love,and happiness. That is why practicing the Fourth Mindfulness Training is a great gift.

So many families, couples, and relationships have been broken because we have lost the capacity of listening to each other with calmness and compassion. We have lost the capacity of using calm and loving speech. The Fourth Mindfulness Training is very important to restore communication

between us. Practicing the Fourth Training on the art of listening and the art of loving speech is a great gift. For example, a family member may suffer very much. No one in the family has been able to sit quietly and listen to him or her. If there is someone capable of sitting calmly and listening with his or her heart for one hour, the other person will feel a great relief from his suffering. If you suffer so much and no one has been able to listen to your suffering, your suffering will remain there. But if someone is able to listen to you and understand you, you will feel relief after one hour of being together.In Buddhism, we speak of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, KwanYin, a person who has a great capacity of listening with compassion and true presence. "KwanYin"means the one who can listen and understand the sound of the world, the cries of suffering. Psychotherapists try to practice the same. They sit very quietly with a lot of compassion and listen to you. Listening like that is not to judge, criticize, condemn, or evaluate, but to listen with the single purpose of helping the other person suffer less. If they are able to listen like that to you for one hour, you feel much better. But psychotherapists have to practice so that they can always maintain compassion, concentration, and deep listening. Otherwise, their quality of listening will be very poor,and

you will not feel better after one hour of listening.

You have to practice breathing mindfully in and out so that compassion always stays with you. "I am listening to him not only because I want to know what is inside him or to give him advice. I am listening to him just because I want to relieve his suffering."That is called compassionate listening. You have to listen in such a way that compassion remains with you the whole time you are listening. That is the art. If halfway through listening irritation or anger comes up, then you cannot continue to listen. You have to practice in such a way that every time the energy of irritation and anger comes up, you can breathe in and out mindfully and continue to hold compassion within you. It is with compassion that you can listen to another. No matter what he says, even if there is a lot of wrong information and injustice in his way of seeing things,even if he condemns or blames you, continue to sit very quietly breathing in and out. Maintain your compassion within you for one hour. That is called compassionate listening. If you can listen like that for one hour, the

other person will feel much better. If you don't feel that you can continue to listen in this way ,ask your friend, 

"Dear one, can we continue in a few days? I need to renew myself. I need to practice so I can listen to you in the best way I can."If you are not in good shape, you are not going to listen the best way you can. You need to practice more walking meditation, more mindful breathing, more sitting meditation in order to restore your capacity for compassionate listening. That is the practice

oft he Fourth Mindfulness Training— training oneself to listen with compassion. That is very important, a great gift.

Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, "I was just telling the truth." It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech. The truth must be presented in ways that others can accept. Words that damage or destroy are not Right Speech. Before you speak, understand the person you are speaking to. Consider each word carefully before you say anything, so that your speech is"Right"in both form and content. The Fourth Mindfulness Training also has to do with loving speech. You have the right to tell another everything in your heart with the condition that you use only loving speech. If you are notable to speak calmly, then don't speak that day. 

"Sorry, my dear, allow me to tell you tomorrow or the next day. I am not at my best today. I'm afraid I'll say things that are unkind. Allow me to tell you about this another day."Open your mouth and speak only when you are sure you can use calm and loving speech. You have to train yourself to be able to do so.

In the Lotus Sutra ,a bodhisattva named Wondrous Sound was able to speak to each person in his or her own language. For someone who needed the language of music, he used music. For those who understood the language of drugs, he spoke in terms of drugs. Every word the Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound said opened up communication and helped others transform. We can do the same, but it takes determination and skillfulness.

When two people are not getting along, we can go to one and speak in a positive way about the other, and then go to the other and speak constructively about thefirst. When person "A"knows that person "B"is suffering, A has a much better chance of understanding and appreciating B. The

art of Right Speech needs Right View, Right Thought, and also correct practice.

Letter writing is a form of speech. A letter can sometimes be safer than speaking, because there is time for you to read what you have written before sending it. As you read your words, you can visualize the other person receiving your letter and decide if what you have written is skillful and appropriate. Your letter has to water the seeds of transformation in the other person and stir something in his heart if it is to be called Right Speech. If any phrase can be misunderstood or upsetting, rewrite it. Right Mindfulness tells you whether you are expressing the truth in the most skillful way. Once you have mailed your letter, you cannot get it back. So read it over carefully several times before sending it. Such a letter will benefit both of you.

Of course you have suffered, but the other person has suffered also. That is why writing is a very good practice. Writing is a practice of looking deeply.

You send the letter only when you are sure that you have looked deeply. You don't need to blame anymore. You need to show that you have a deeper understanding. It is true that the other person suffers, and that alone is worth your compassion. When you begin to understand the suffering of the other person,compassion will arise in you and the language you use will havethe power of healing. Compassion is the only energy tha tcan help us connect with another person. The person who has no compassion in him can never be happy. When you practice looking at the person to whom you are going to write a letter, if you can begin to see his suffering, compassion will be born. The moment compassion is born in you, you feel better already,even before you finish the letter. After sending the letter, you feel even better, because you know the other person will also feel bette rafter reading your letter.

Everyone needs understanding and acceptance. And now you have understanding to offer. By writing a letter like this, you restore communication.

Writing a book or an article can be done in the same way. Writing is a deep practice. Even before we begin writing, during whatever we are doing - gardening or sweeping the floor - our book or essay is being written deep in our consciousness. To writ ea book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk. When writing a book or an article, we know that our words will affect many other people. We do not have the right just to express our own suffering if it brings suffering to others. Many books, poems, and songs take away our faith in life. Young people today curl up in bed with their iPods and listen to unwholesome music, songs that water seeds of great sadness and agitation in them. When we practice Right View and Right Thinking, we will put all of our music that waters only seeds of anguish into a box and not listen to it anymore.

Filmmakers, musicians, and writers need to practice Right Speech to help our society move again in the direction of peace, joy,and faith in the future.

Telephone meditation i another practice that can help us cultivate Right Speech:

Words can travel thousands of miles.

May my words create mutual understanding and love.

May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers.

You may like to write this gatha on a piece of paper and tape it near your telephone. Then, every time you are about to make a phone call, place your hand on the phone and recite these words. This gatha expresses the determination to practice Right Speech. Even as you say the words, your mind already becomes more peaceful and your insight more clear. The person you are calling will hear the freshness in your voice,and your words will bring her great happiness and not cause suffering. As our meditation practice deepens, we are much less caught in words. Capable of practicing silence, we are free as a bird, in touch with the essence of things. The founder of one of the schools of Vietnamese Zen Buddhism wrote, "Don't ask me anything else. My essence is wordless."

 To practice mindfulness of speech, sometimes we hav eto practice silence. Then we can look deeply to see what our views are and what internal knots give rise to our thinking. Silence is a time for looking deeply. There are times when silence is truth, and that is called "thundering silence". Confucius said, "The heavens do not say anything." That also means, the heavens tell us so much, but we don't know how to listen to them. If we listen out of the silence of our mind, every

bird's song and every whistling of the pine trees in the wind will speak to us. In the Sukhavati Sutra, it is said that every time the wind blows through the jeweled trees, a miracle is produced. If we listen carefully to that sound, we will hear the Buddha teaching the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eight-fold Path. Right Mindfulness helps us slow down and listen to each word from the birds, the trees,and our own mind and speech. Whether we say something kind or respond too hastily, we hear what we are saying.

Words and thoughts can kill. We cannot support acts of killing in our thinking or in our speech. If you have a job in which telling the truth is impossible, you may have to change jobs. If you have a job that allows you to speak the truth, please be grateful. To practice social justice and non-exploitation, we have to use Right Speech.

  

Reincarnation in Buddhism

What the Buddha Didn't Teach

By Barbara O'Brien

Would you be surprised if I told you that reincarnation is not a Buddhist teaching? If so, be surprised -- it isn't.

"Reincarnation" normally is understood to be the transmigration of a soul to another body after death. There is no such teaching in Buddhism. One of the most fundamental doctrines of Buddhism isanatta, or anatman -- no soul or no self. There is no permanent essence of an individual self that survives death.

However, Buddhists often speak of "rebirth." If there is no soul or permanent self, what is it that is "reborn"?

What Is the Self?

The Buddha taught that what we think of as our "self" -- our ego, self-consciousness and personality -- is a creation of the skandhas. Very simply, our bodies, physical and emotional sensations, conceptualizations, ideas and beliefs, and consciousness work together to create the illusion of a permanent, distinctive "me."

The Buddha said, “Oh, Bhikshu, every moment you are born, decay, and die.” He meant that, every moment, the illusion of "me" renews itself. Not only is nothing carried over from one life to the next; nothing is carried over from one moment to the next.

This takes us to the Three Marks of Existence, in particular anicca, "impermanence." The Buddha taught that all phenomena, including beings, are in a constant state of flux -- always changing, always becoming, always dying.

What Is Reborn?

In his book What the Buddha Taught (1959), Theravada scholar Walpola Rahula asked,

"If we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent, unchanging substance like Self or Soul, why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a Self or Soul behind them after the non-functioning of the body?

"When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die with it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life. ... Physical and mental energies which constitute the so-called being have within themselves the power to take a new form, and grow gradually and gather force to the full."

Zen teacher John Daido Loori said,

"... the Buddha’s experience was that when you go beyond the skandhas, beyond the aggregates, what remains is nothing. The self is an idea, a mental construct. That is not only the Buddha’s experience, but the experience of each realized Buddhist man and woman from 2,500 years ago to the present day. That being the case, what is it that dies? There is no question that when this physical body is no longer capable of functioning, the energies within it, the atoms and molecules it is made up of, don’t die with it. They take on another form, another shape. You can call that another life, but as there is no permanent, unchanging substance, nothing passes from one moment to the next. Quite obviously, nothing permanent or unchanging can pass or transmigrate from one life to the next. Being born and dying continues unbroken but changes every moment."

Thought Moment to Thought Moment

The teachers tell us that "me" is a series of thought-moments. Each thought-moment conditions the next thought-moment. In the same way, the last thought-moment of one life conditions the first thought-moment of another life, which is the continuation of a series. "The person who dies here and is reborn elsewhere is neither the same person, nor another," Walpola Rahula wrote.

This is not easy to understand, and cannot be fully understood with intellect alone. For this reason, many schools of Buddhism emphasize a meditation practice that enables intimate realization of the illusion of self.

Karma and Rebirth

The force that propels this continuity is karma. Karma is another Asian concept that Westerners (and, for that matter, a lot of Easterners) often misunderstand. Karma is not fate, but simple action and reaction, cause and effect. For a more complete explanation, please see "Karma for Buddhists 101: Introduction to the Buddhist Understanding of Karma."

Very simply, Buddhism teaches that karma means "volitional action." Any thought, word or deed conditioned by desire, hate, passion and illusion create karma. When the effects of karma reach across lifetimes, karma brings about rebirth.

The Persistence of Belief in Reincarnation

There is no question that many Buddhists, East and West, continue to believe in individual reincarnation. Parables from the sutras and "teaching aids" like the Tibetan Wheel of Life tend to reinforce this belief.

The Rev. Takashi Tsuji, a Jodo Shinshu priest, wrote about belief in reincarnation:

"It is said that the Buddha left 84,000 teachings; the symbolic figure represents the diverse backgrounds characteristics, tastes, etc. of the people. The Buddha taught according to the mental and spiritual capacity of each individual. For the simple village folks living during the time of the Buddha, the doctrine of reincarnation was a powerful moral lesson. Fear of birth into the animal world must have frightened many people from acting like animals in this life. If we take this teaching literally today we are confused because we cannot understand it rationally.

"...A parable, when taken literally, does not make sense to the modern mind. Therefore we must learn to differentiate the parables and myths from actuality."

What's the Point?

People often turn to religion for doctrines that provide simple answers to difficult questions. Buddhism doesn't work that way. Merely believing in some doctrine about reincarnation or rebirth has no purpose. Buddhism is a practice that enables experiencing illusion as illusion and reality as reality.

The Buddha taught that our delusional belief in "me" causes our many dissatisfactions with life (dukkha). When the illusion is experienced as illusion, we are liberated.

 

Buddhism: Philosophy or Religion?

By Barbara O'Brien

Through the week-long sesshin Zen students had been sitting, robed and still, in the zendo. We had kept silence, except when we were chanting. We engaged in rituals. We listened to talks given by ordained priests and monks. We bowed a lot.

Then sesshin was done, and we students left the zendo and spilled out into the sunshine, chattering and hugging. The husband of a sister student arrived to take his wife home. He approached a group of us and said, Of course, Buddhism is a philosophy. It's not a religion.

No one argued. I think we were all too tired to argue. But no one agreed, either. What we'd been doing all week certainly looked and felt like religion. Why would Buddhism not be religion?

This or That?

In my experience, people who say Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion usually mean it as a compliment. They are trying to say, I think, that Buddhism is something other than the superstitious rubbish they believe religion to be.

In this view, religion is a jumble of primitive folklore that humankind drags through the ages like a cosmic security blanket. Religion is passionate and irrational and messy. But philosophyis the flower of human intellect. It is reasonable and civilized. Religion inspires war and atrocity; at worst, philosophy incites mild arguments over coffee and dessert.

Buddhism -- some Buddhism, anyway -- is a practice of contemplation and inquiry that doesn't depend on belief in God or a soul or anything supernatural. Therefore, the theory goes, it can't be a religion.

Killing the Buddha

Sam Harris expressed this view of Buddhism in his essay "Killing the Buddha" (Shambhala Sun, March 2006). Harris admires Buddhism, calling it "the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced." But he thinks it would be even better if it could be pried away from Buddhists.

"The wisdom of the Buddha is currently trapped within the religion of Buddhism," Harris laments. "Worse still, the continued identification of Buddhists with Buddhism lends tacit support to the religious differences in our world. ... Given the degree to which religion still inspires human conflict, and impedes genuine inquiry, I believe that merely being a self-described 'Buddhist' is to be complicit in the world's violence and ignorance to an unacceptable degree."

"Killing the Buddha" is from a Zen saying -- If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Harris interprets this as a warning against turning the Buddha into a "religious fetish" and thereby missing the essence of what he taught.

But this is Harris's interpretation of the phrase. In Zen, "killing the Buddha" means to extinguish ideas and concepts about the Buddha in order to realize the True Buddha. Harris is not killing the Buddha; he is merely replacing a religious idea of the Buddha with a non-religious one more to his liking.

Head Boxes

In many ways, the "religion versus philosophy" argument is an artificial one. The neat separation between religion and philosophy we insist on today didn't exist in western civilization until the 18th century or so, and there never was such a separation in eastern civilization. To insist that Buddhism must be one thing and not the other amounts to forcing an ancient product into modern packaging.

In Buddhism, this sort of conceptual packaging is considered to be a barrier to enlightenment. Without realizing it we use prefabricated concepts about ourselves and the world around us to organize and interpret what we learn and experience. One of the functions of Buddhist practice is to sweep away all the artificial filing cabinets in our heads so that we see the world as-it-is.

In the same way, arguing about whether Buddhism is a philosophy or a religion isn't an argument about Buddhism. It's an argument about our biases regarding philosophy and religion. Buddhism is what it is.

Dogma Versus Mysticism

The Buddhism-as-philosophy argument leans heavily on the fact that Buddhism is less dogmatic than most other religions. This argument, however, ignores mysticism.

Mysticism is hard to define, but very basically it is the direct and intimate experience of ultimate reality, or the Absolute, or God. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a more detailed explanation of mysticism.

Buddhism is deeply mystical, and mysticism belongs to religion more than philosophy. Through meditation, Siddhartha Gautama intimately experienced Thusness beyond subject and object, self and other, life and death. The enlightenment experience is the sine qua non of Buddhism.

Transcendence

What is religion? Those who argue that Buddhism is not a religion tend to define religion as a belief system, which is a western notion. Religious historian Karen Armstrong defines religion as a search for transcendence, going beyond the self.

It's said that the only way to understand Buddhism is to practice it. Through practice, one perceives its transformative power. A Buddhism that remains in the realm of concepts and ideas is not Buddhism. The robes, ritual and other trappings of religion are not a corruption of Buddhism, as some imagine, but expressions of it.

There's a Zen story in which a professor visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The master served tea. When the visitor's cup was full, the master kept pouring. Tea spilled out of the cup and over the table.

"The cup is full!" said the professor. "No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," said the master, "You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

If you want to understand Buddhism, empty your cup.