Good morning. Big group today. Big group. And this is the day of the month, the Sunday of the month, for those of you who don't know, that we are welcoming the children. children's lecture morning. So we'll spend a few minutes having a little chat with the children, youngsters, and then we'll go on with something or other. So I want to play a little game with the kids and ask you a question. I've been thinking about this question all week when I knew you were going to be here. So my question is this. What is the most powerful thing in the world?

[01:08]

What's the strongest thing in the world, do you think? Go ahead, take a chance. Love. That's a hard one to beat. How about somebody else? Anybody else have an idea? What's the strongest? What do you think is the strongest thing? Nobody else? Go ahead. You in the green shirt. Dean, ask a question, maybe. Strongest thing in the world. Well, I'm going to tell you what my answer is. I think words, words are the strongest thing in the world.

[02:14]

At least, sometimes I think that. And when I think that words are the strongest thing in the world, I think, what do I mean by words? Words. Now you have heard, all of you kids have heard the saying, sticks and stones will break my bones, right? You heard that? What's the rest of it? But words will never hurt me. True or false? Go ahead. False. False, why? I don't know. I'm a parent. You see, he used to call me a dingle butter stuff, and stuff like that. I did. I would, like, get really upset, and then he'd give me this look. That would hurt me. And then he'd also throw sticks and stones at me, and that hurt. I should get him, too. Okay. Okay. It sounds like words are pretty important, though.

[03:18]

Sticks and stones can certainly break our bones. It hurts to get hit with a stick and a stone, doesn't it? But words will never hurt me. I don't think anybody here in the whole room would agree with that. I think everybody in this room has been hurt by words, sometimes. So when somebody says something mean to you, When somebody calls you, what did you say? Call you different names. Okay, jingle butt. When somebody calls you by those names, what do you feel? Somebody else. What do you feel? Come on. When somebody calls you a name that makes you feel kind of what? It makes you feel kind of bad, doesn't it? I feel bad. I remember when I was on the playground as a little kid, if you can believe that, and somebody called me a name that didn't feel very good.

[04:32]

I felt like I was kind of, somebody had taken a needle and stuck it into me and everything went out of me, like a balloon, you know, pop. I just would collapse inside. It hurt to be called certain names. At the same time, I bet like some of you, I learned how to call names back. There's another saying. Have you heard this one? I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. You know that one? That's a good one. Not that it's good. Not that giving people insults is good, but it's... Whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you. But sometimes I can remember saying words to other kids that stuck to me.

[05:36]

I would really feel bad after I said it. Some unkind thing, some mean thing. to somebody else. And I felt terrible. I would go home and feel really bad about it. And I'd want to make it up. So early, early, early, very early, not so long after I learned to put some words together, I learned how powerful those words were and are and how careful sometimes and most of the time we have to be when we use words with each other. How we speak to each other. And not only how we speak, what kind of words we choose to use and how appropriate and how right or wrong they feel, but the voice in which we say them. Everybody knows it's not so much what you say, but how you say it. Where it comes from, if it comes from your heart or if it comes from that place in you where you want to hurt somebody else.

[06:38]

So the talk today is called Right Speech. And right speech is one of the steps in what we call in Buddhism, the Eightfold Path. Right speech. Right means in this case, not only something that's just opposite from wrong, but right means complete. Completely, thoroughly present. Being just present with what you're saying, paying attention. to your words and paying attention to the words that other people are talking, are saying when they're talking to you. Rather than sitting there listening to somebody talk to you and not really listening to them, but listening to that little voice in your head about what you're going to say next. Or if they're saying something that you don't agree with, you can feel all this kind of feet, this kind of disturbing feeling that you want to

[07:42]

express, so you don't really hear them. I can remember always parents and grandparents correcting me for saying something that was hurtful and not thought out. And just because I would want to get some kind of attention from them. They never actually wash my mouth out with soap. But they threaten too many times. If you say that again, I'll wash your mouth out with soap. I learned early how to use words to manipulate, to handle, to control other people. That's why I say they're so strong, you see, words. So today when you go outside and when you do your thing together, maybe you should think about very carefully the way you speak to each other.

[08:52]

Not only to each other as boys and girls, but to your parents and to your teachers and how they speak to you. Can you do that? You think about words today? Anybody? Anybody? Yes? No? I don't care? You have any questions you want to ask about words? Well, I'm using a lot of words right now in your screaming, in your suits, and I think it's kind of a little bit embarrassing, huh? Yeah. Are you ready to go out and do something? Go out in the nice sunshine? No? You want to stay here with us? Okay. Thank you very much for being here this morning.

[09:55]

I always have a feeling that when we're preaching we talk to children as if they were adults and then adults as if they were children. Right speech. I'm going to read you from one of the early Nikayas or discourses in the Buddhist canon. What purportedly was said by Shakyamuni Buddha about right speech in brief, and then maybe we'll discuss it in some length, some examples. What is right speech? Absention from lying, slander, abuse, and gossip. Here someone abandons lying when summoned to a court or to a meeting or to his relative's presence or to his guild or to the royal family's presence and questioned as a witness thus, So, good man, tell me what you know.

[11:54]

Then, not knowing, he says, I do not know. Knowing she says, I know. Not seeing he says, I do not see. Seeing she says, I see. She does not in full awareness speak falsehood for her own ends or for another's ends or for some pretty worldly end. He abandons slander. as one who is neither a repeater elsewhere of what is heard here for the purpose of causing division from there, nor a repeater of these of what is heard elsewhere for the purpose of causing division from those, who is thus a reuniter of the divided, a promoter of friendships." Enjoying Concord, rejoicing in Concord, delighting in Concord, she becomes a speaker of words that promote Concord. He abandons abuse.

[12:54]

He becomes a speaker of such words as are innocent, pleasing to the ear and lovable, as go to the heart, are civil, desired of many and dear to many. She abandons gossip as one who tells that which is seasonable, factual, good. And the law and the discipline he speaks in season, speech with recording, which is reasoned, definite, and connected with good. Well, we've heard all of that many times, not only through Buddhist literature, of course, but from one another since as early as we can remember. Not to spread falsehoods about one another and not to abuse, not to gossip, slander or lie. But really, what does right speech mean? Because there are times, obviously, when maybe to tell a lie would save somebody from even a worse fate.

[14:00]

What is right speech? What is complete, thorough, mindful speech? What is saying the right thing in the right way at the right time in a world of conceptual and linguistic convention, the human world, really about? How do we go about really knowing what right speech is? I knew a woman once who was very, very popular with everybody. One of those people that you normally, they just walk into the room and you're like them for some reason. And someone asked her before she died, how come she seemed to live such a life of conquest? They didn't use those words, but a life of concord. That's what people would feel with her. She said, I always taste the words before they come out. I always taste the words before they come out of my mouth. That's pretty good. Trouble is, usually the horse is out of the barn before you think of closing the door, right?

[15:07]

And you wish you could pull those words back. How many times have we wished we could pull the words back that we have uttered in anger before? And I'm going to tell you a story. I think it has bearing on right speech. A number of years ago, I was a consular in a residential treatment center for youngsters from 12 to 18. This is 25 years or so ago. And I was put in a home where, in my particular group, a cottage, there were all girls, 12 girls. The dirty dozen, we called them. Kids from, you know, black kids, Hispanic kids, white kids, kids from almost every walk of life, but all of whom had been

[16:15]

abused in one way or another, and who had learned speech patterns, epithets, curses, that would put a French pirate, make him blush. And I was in this cottage with these youngsters, and I had been there about six weeks, and each of the three, each of the times that I went in I would start trembling a little bit before I got there because I had not yet earned my place. It was their turf and I was an outsider coming in in the beginning. So one day after listening to this language that these girls used toward each other and toward the counselors, language that they had picked up in defense, I came in from my break and I wrote on the blackboard, which faced the door, from now on there will be no cursing, no profanity in this cottage.

[17:27]

And I signed my name under it. And they had been gone at that time. When they came back from school, which was on the property, and saw that, what was written there in words, you cannot imagine the stream of profanity that came from it. right under my nose. And I would say that one among all of them stood out with her creative ability to put epithets together in such a way that even a stevedore had never heard. I'll call her Kit, just for that. It wasn't her real name, but she was one of these youngsters, a girl. Her whole visage looked as if she'd put her tongue into a light socket, as they say. It was kind of electrified. A girl with supernormal intelligence as well as street smarts, and a girl who really knew how to use vituperative language in a way that could destroy anything before her.

[18:30]

Well, that night, that afternoon, that they began to go crazy with their language, I simply said, the cottage is closed. I had that authority together with the other consular. And we decided that they could not go out, they could not receive visitors, they couldn't do anything. They had to sit there. In fact, because we had these models based on sending on programs and the like, behavior modification, we'd have to have a group, sit down in a group and discuss what was happening. And it was the hell realm to do this. But little by little, because we understood that these youngsters wanted discipline in a sense. They wanted guidelines. They wanted boundaries, you see. We had to put ourselves on the line and make that happen. And by evening, when the calls would come in and so on, could they go over to another cottage, I remember one of the girls saying, no, papa. Luke, the first time I heard this word, says we can't do it.

[19:40]

I knew at that moment that somehow I had gained a bit of authority. Right speech, trying to teach one another how to control our language. Little by little, that girl, by the way, became very hip to when to open her mouth and when not to. Because we had a program in which you could advance, you see, before you graduated and show that you could hold your mud, as we used to say, if you could hold your mud. and not splatted all over the world in your reactive pattern every time something came into your face. So they were learning this discipline and so were we as counselors learning the same way how to deal with one another. But then one night I got a phone call in the morning. We spent three days on the shift Toward morning, I got this phone call. It woke me up, and I picked up the telephone, and I heard this voice, which I knew so well.

[20:45]

She had a kind of husky Janis Joplin type of voice. She said, Papa, I'm in jail. I thought she was in bed down the hall. You're in jail? I'm in Oakland, and I'm in jail. What should I do? Now, what is right speech here? Years later, years later, I'd ask myself, what was right speech at that moment? Should I commiserate and say, oh, poor, you know, should I get angry? What should I say? She said, you know, you have to talk to the police officers and so on. I think it was juvenile. They were in juvenile hall. Some midnight traveler had come over and picked her up. She'd gone out the window. So I said, actually, I don't know what to say to you, but we'll talk tomorrow. And we hung up. That was the last I ever heard from her.

[21:50]

Years later, I found out, in fact, that she had taken her life. And I often wondered, you know, had that been the moment, had that been one of those crucial moments in my life where a single word would have turned something to sin? If I had, where was I coming from? What was that space? The fact that I was a little groggy at that moment, of course, was not helpful, that I wasn't totally present, totally aware of the totality of the situation. But I think all of us have had these experiences of when right speech, a word, a single word would have turned our life on a dime, made a big difference. And it's happened to us before, and most assuredly it's going to continue to happen. Also, you know, it's interesting the different styles of speaking.

[22:53]

Some people have a kind of sarcastic way of dealing with the world, or a cynical way. Other people have a rather witty way of dealing with it. Everything in the world is a source and a subject for humor and a joke, a quick rip-your-light stab to keep things moving. And it isn't that right speech should always be this kind of drab, pontifical, very careful pattern. In fact, in the Zen tradition, you know, in our tradition, Right speech can come in the most unusual packaging. We read the stories of the Chinese masters and so on. They would use insults and sarcasm and so on when the monk that was asking him some question was still hanging on some aspect of his ego, her ego. And the master would see that and use some word, some word to chop through it, sometimes a very, very sarcastic, blunt word.

[23:55]

But because they were coming from a place of compassion, a place that wanted to release this individual from this individual's suffering, from the entrapment of their egoistic patterns, they would use any device possible to break through. So right speech is then being conscious and aware of more than just the reactive patterns, but being aware of all of the sense of what language is about. And what it is, is a convention. that we have used and adopted as human beings to define the world for ourselves. And right speech also means to see through the conventions, to see what we would call the emptiness of speech. The fact that we use words and that words hurt and that we make a world out of words, to see that we do that as process and not get trapped so much by the words and the language And all of you, many of you at least, have taken part in communication workshops, learning how to communicate with one another more effectively.

[25:02]

And that is a part of right speech, to be able to remain silent while the other person is having his or her say. And then speaking back to them what we hear that person saying and developing strategies and methods. by which to speak, address one another, communicate with one another in a way in which an understanding can emerge commonly rather than from one side or the other. In our practice as monks, of course, classically speaking, monks maintain silence as much as possible because they knew the power of words and that monks should only speak when there was really something to be said and not just dribble away all of their energy into idle chatter. But there's limitations in silence, and I heard that the monks at Gethsemane Monastery — that was Thomas Merton's monastery — when they were finally allowed to speak to one another, found out that they didn't know how to really communicate.

[26:06]

And that when they did, they were amazed at the feelings that came forth, and that they had to really work with language, through language, through the conventions of language and the power of language to get free. And that silence alone was not the answer. Now we, by the way, you know, there's many people sitting with us today, forgot to mention this earlier, who have been here all week, volunteers who have come in for this week of what we call work week. And I want to take a moment just to say to all of you who have joined us this week to build and paint and clear away grounds and do the innumerable tasks that keep the monastery, that keep this practice place going, thank you. Personally, I want to thank all of you for doing that. Work and language.

[27:08]

that a place like Green Gulch or Tassajara or city center or maybe any monastic setting is a crucial aspect of how we use language in work. And of course, if you've been here, you know that we try to work in silence and only speak when it's necessary for functional purposes. But I noticed also that when we start working together that the natural tendency of coming up and finding out each other's stories and where we're from and who we are and begin to build an identity, begin to build a story so that we can function in a milieu that our stories provide a ground of understanding. It's hard not to fall into that. It's hard not to make our stories immediately explicit to one another, but to leave some ground for the mystery of being together, to develop out of silence, you see. So people have to keep checking themselves and say, wait, wait, wait, I just want to, if I'm painting or if I'm cutting vegetables or whatever my activity is, let's just a moment take a little space here and drop the conversation and just return to the work itself.

[28:23]

We're deluged with words now, aren't we? I mean, we've got the internet now. Soon it will be the intergalactic network. Dot U or something. And you remember when the information, I mean, this technological explosion was going to free us all from, so we'd have more leisure time to really develop ourselves? And now you can't go home without the fax running or your cell phone buzzing or your buzzer calling us always back to get more information, more speech, more talk, more conversation, more concepts. How to deal with all that? Where's right speech in all of that? It's a question I think that we have to ask ourselves very clearly. What produces concordance? and what doesn't. How to say the right thing in the right way at the right time. That's the classical definition of what good writing is, by the way.

[29:32]

I think of Lenny Bruce. Remember Lenny Bruce? Well, whether you agreed with the kind of language he used or not, one of the things that Lenny Bruce did was try to liberate what we call socially proscribed language from the terrific power it has over us, the invective and the kind of repressed side of this, the repressed shadow behind language, by repeating it over and over and over and over, using it in this context, endlessly drumming it into you, into one, kind of draining it of its power. So this becomes sounds pretty strong, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that was, I think, a very useful thing to break through. Now, of course, the language that was used back in the 50s that would, through Lenny Bruce and Jerry, you can just plug in the TV, put any video almost in, and you hear it now.

[30:49]

And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's bad. I don't know. We could argue about that point or discuss that point. But I think sometimes it was a good thing that we have certain people that shock us out of the power that language holds over us so that we can see its emptiness, its essential emptiness, that it's all interdependent, arises according to conditions, passes away according to conditions. And take a breath and let it go. I remember, oh yes, and also, you know, we have what's called in the Koan tradition of Zen Buddhism, the capping phrase. Often the teacher would say something to, the master would say something to the student. What are you doing here today, for example? And the student might say something, well, I'm I'm doing nothing here. And the teacher would come back with a capping phrase.

[31:52]

If you're doing nothing, then slap him or whatever. And the student had to come back with another phrase on top of that, going from the universal to the particular and so on. But I noticed in our own speech from day to day, in the kind of status games we play, we use capping phrases with one another. We kind of one-up one another. We kind of put an end to it. Example I remember in my own life, one more story here. It helps me to tell stories. It helps the time go, you see. I was selling newspapers on the street, believe it or not, and it was a good job. It was like a humanities course for about three hours in the morning once upon a time for the Chronicle. It helped pay the rent. Well, I got to know some street people and I got to understand where they were coming from better and we had a pretty interesting kind of communication.

[32:52]

And one of these street people was a woman who had multiple sclerosis and she limped about and begged and was constantly in her cups. Whenever she got money, she was drunk. She used to come up to me and talk to me and I really enjoyed her because she was very real in who she was. And she said to me one day, she said, Dave, what's going to happen to me? Well, at this moment, I decided I was going to tell her. So I said, you know what a cadaver is? You know, I don't know. I said, a cadaver, someday you're going to fall down dead in the street. And you probably, you tell me there's no one left in your life. So your body is going to be used for medical purposes. So picture yourself, Sherrick, stretched out, buck naked on a table under bright lights in a room filled with young medical students peering down at you.

[33:55]

And above you stands the teacher with a real sharp scalpel in one hand, reaches down and lays you open from your sternum to your crotch, reaches in and pulls out your diseased liver and says, see, this is what alcohol does. And she looked at me the way she often did, with a smile that was, I used to call it half acid and half honey. She said, Dave, you always make my day. Thank you. A really good capping phrase. You see, we all laugh at that. We like that. We like this kind of exchange. I think it was very appropriate to put me right in my place. She too has gone on to other lands. I heard.

[34:59]

I heard. In one of the scriptures in the Lotus Sutra, there's a story of the Bodhisattva never despise. It was called Bodhisattva never despise or never disparage. And according to the scripture at this time, it was a time in which the Buddhist teachings, you know, in Buddhism, in Buddhist teachings, there's a period where the teaching is still fresh.

[36:02]

And then there's a place where it begins to become a little more structured and ossified, becomes more conceptual. Finally there's a place where it begins to fall apart, degenerate, and then it starts up again, refreshes itself. Well, this was a period in which the monks, of which Bodhi never despised, lived among, were very proud and arrogant about their understanding of the Buddha Dharma. And Bodhisattva's never despised practice was whenever he saw a monk or a nun, he would immediately prostrate himself. and say, I see in you the enlightened future Buddha. And they would say, oh, this guy, this jerk, you know, look at him. What does he think he's doing, you know? Who does he think he is to tell us that someday we are going to be enlightened?

[37:05]

And disparage him and throw rocks at him. and urine at him and feces at him because of what they considered to be his arrogance. No matter what they did or what anybody in any walk of life did a Bodhi never despise, he would always bow down to them and say, I see in you the glowing, illuminated future Buddha. Now, I guess if somebody actually in our life did that all the time to us, it would be a little bit annoying that every time we seem to be in a bad space, they would throw themselves ... But on the other hand, you know, there is a practice, you know, where when you're really in a bad space, you throw yourself down and bow and you say to yourself, you know, Bodhi never despise. I see in you the future, transcendent, illuminated, fully present Buddha. And you're saying it to yourself. So right speech could also have to do with the fact that, you know, kind of that tai chi, you know, when the energy is coming toward us, we dance with it.

[38:17]

And we also are bowing down before the power of that phenomenon. And become Bodhi never despise. No matter, you know, we consider in this practice that the best teachings are those that come at us like a left hook. Take you by surprise, knock you off here. your safe, secure, egocentric place and wake you up. So when we practice together here, you know, it's very difficult. Working in the kitchen, for example, with having to get three meals out a day and all the heat and the tension and... or trying to get the work done, working with one another, constantly sitting together, that we feel this quarrelsomeness. We feel this lack of concord come up again and again and again, and how we speak to each other when it comes up in the midst of our work, you see, as monks, as practitioners.

[39:23]

It becomes a central issue. in the way we address each other and how we handle our words and the charge that they carry back and forth. Rather than the silence so much, those are the issues. And not only that, but how we even look at each other, you know. We can kill with looks here. You can be silent and just, you know, kill with a look. I don't like you. I don't like this. So right speech is sometimes just remaining silent and taking it, absorbing it, letting it go through you, feeling the emptiness of words. That's just Lenny Bruce saying all these words to me. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Feel them go through me. Feel that, without moving, feel that reverberation, that contraction. That sense of pulling away, that limbic system fight and flight response.

[40:28]

And then out of that space, they say, and it can be practiced, a natural appropriate response will arise if you just don't fall into the usual survival mechanism of fighting back or running away. So that's what we try to do here, and I think all of us are practicing that in our life to some extent. I'm not beyond disagreeing with Mark Twain who said, the right cuss word at the right moment affords enormous relief. Every time I hit my psychological thumb in one way or another, I notice a certain explosive flies out of my mouth willy-nilly, and probably always will. My grandmother used to always say, That was wonderful. Mercy. Rather than what I say.

[41:31]

Good. It's time. Right speech is also knowing when to shut up. Thank you very much.

[42:02]

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