Noble Eightfold Path

Ethical Conduct

Right Speech

(samma vaca)

The
Buddha divides right speech into four components: abstaining from false
speech, abstaining from slanderous speech, abstaining from harsh
speech, and abstaining from idle chatter. Because the effects of speech
are not as immediately evident as those of bodily action, its importance
and potential is easily overlooked. But a little reflection will show
that speech and its offshoot, the written word, can have enormous
consequences for good or for harm. In fact, whereas for beings such as
animals who live at the preverbal level physical action is of dominant
concern, for humans immersed in verbal communication speech gains the
ascendency. Speech can break lives, create enemies, and start wars, or
it can give wisdom, heal divisions, and create peace. This has always
been so, yet in the modern age the positive and negative potentials of
speech have been vastly multiplied by the tremendous increase in the
means, speed, and range of communications. The capacity for verbal
expression, oral and written, has often been regarded as the
distinguishing mark of the human species. From this we can appreciate
the need to make this capacity the means to human excellence rather
than, as too often has been the case, the sign of human degradation.

(1) Abstaining from false speech (musavada veramani)

Herein
someone avoids false speech and abstains from it. He speaks the truth,
is devoted to truth, reliable, worthy of confidence, not a deceiver of
people. Being at a meeting, or amongst people, or in the midst of his
relatives, or in a society, or in the king’s court, and called upon and
asked as witness to tell what he knows, he answers, if he knows nothing:
“I know nothing,” and if he knows, he answers: “I know”; if he has seen
nothing, he answers: “I have seen nothing,” and if he has seen, he
answers: “I have seen.” Thus he never knowingly speaks a lie, either for
the sake of his own advantage, or for the sake of another person’s
advantage, or for the sake of any advantage whatsoever.21

This
statement of the Buddha discloses both the negative and the positive
sides to the precept. The negative side is abstaining from lying, the
positive side speaking the truth. The determinative factor behind the
transgression is the intention to deceive. If one speaks something false
believing it to be true, there is no breach of the precept as the
intention to deceive is absent. Though the deceptive intention is common
to all cases of false speech, lies can appear in different guises
depending on the motivating root, whether greed, hatred, or delusion.
Greed as the chief motive results in the lie aimed at gaining some
personal advantage for oneself or for those close to oneself — material
wealth, position, respect, or admiration. With hatred as the motive,
false speech takes the form of the malicious lie, the lie intended to
hurt and damage others. When delusion is the principal motive, the
result is a less pernicious type of falsehood: the irrational lie, the
compulsive lie, the interesting exaggeration, lying for the sake of a
joke.

The
Buddha’s stricture against lying rests upon several reasons. For one
thing, lying is disruptive to social cohesion. People can live together
in society only in an atmosphere of mutual trust, where they have reason
to believe that others will speak the truth; by destroying the grounds
for trust and inducing mass suspicion, widespread lying becomes the
harbinger signalling the fall from social solidarity to chaos. But lying
has other consequences of a deeply personal nature at least equally
disastrous. By their very nature lies tend to proliferate. Lying once
and finding our word suspect, we feel compelled to lie again to defend
our credibility, to paint a consistent picture of events. So the process
repeats itself: the lies stretch, multiply, and connect until they lock
us into a cage of falsehoods from which it is difficult to escape. The
lie is thus a miniature paradigm for the whole process of subjective
illusion. In each case the self-assured creator, sucked in by his own
deceptions, eventually winds up their victim.

Such
considerations probably lie behind the words of counsel the Buddha
spoke to his son, the young novice Rahula, soon after the boy was
ordained. One day the Buddha came to Rahula, pointed to a bowl with a
little bit of water in it, and asked: “Rahula, do you see this bit of
water left in the bowl?” Rahula answered: “Yes, sir.” “So little,
Rahula, is the spiritual achievement (samañña, lit. ‘recluseship’) of
one who is not afraid to speak a deliberate lie.” Then the Buddha threw
the water away, put the bowl down, and said: “Do you see, Rahula, how
that water has been discarded? In the same way one who tells a
deliberate lie discards whatever spiritual achievement he has made.”
Again he asked: “Do you see how this bowl is now empty? In the same way
one who has no shame in speaking lies is empty of spiritual
achievement.” Then the Buddha turned the bowl upside down and said: “Do
you see, Rahula, how this bowl has been turned upside down? In the same
way one who tells a deliberate lie turns his spiritual achievements
upside down and becomes incapable of progress.” Therefore, the Buddha
concluded, one should not speak a deliberate lie even in jest.22

It
is said that in the course of his long training for enlightenment over
many lives, a bodhisatta can break all the moral precepts except the
pledge to speak the truth. The reason for this is very profound, and
reveals that the commitment to truth has a significance transcending the
domain of ethics and even mental purification, taking us to the domains
of knowledge and being. Truthful speech provides, in the sphere of
interpersonal communication, a parallel to wisdom in the sphere of
private understanding. The two are respectively the outward and inward
modalities of the same commitment to what is real. Wisdom consists in
the realization of truth, and truth (sacca) is not just a verbal
proposition but the nature of things as they are. To realize truth our
whole being has to be brought into accord with actuality, with things as
they are, which requires that in communications with others we respect
things as they are by speaking the truth. Truthful speech establishes a
correspondence between our own inner being and the real nature of
phenomena, allowing wisdom to rise up and fathom their real nature.
Thus, much more than an ethical principle, devotion to truthful speech
is a matter of taking our stand on reality rather than illusion, on the
truth grasped by wisdom rather than the fantasies woven by desire.

(2) Abstaining from slanderous speech (pisunaya vacaya veramani)

He
avoids slanderous speech and abstains from it. What he has heard here
he does not repeat there, so as to cause dissension there; and what he
has heard there he does not repeat here, so as to cause dissension here.
Thus he unites those that are divided; and those that are united he
encourages. Concord gladdens him, he delights and rejoices in concord;
and it is concord that he spreads by his words.23

Slanderous
speech is speech intended to create enmity and division, to alienate
one person or group from another. The motive behind such speech is
generally aversion, resentment of a rival’s success or virtues, the
intention to tear down others by verbal denigrations. Other motives may
enter the picture as well: the cruel intention of causing hurt to
others, the evil desire to win affection for oneself, the perverse
delight in seeing friends divided.

Slanderous
speech is one of the most serious moral transgressions. The root of
hate makes the unwholesome kamma already heavy enough, but since the
action usually occurs after deliberation, the negative force becomes
even stronger because premeditation adds to its gravity. When the
slanderous statement is false, the two wrongs of falsehood and slander
combine to produce an extremely powerful unwholesome kamma. The
canonical texts record several cases in which the calumny of an innocent
party led to an immediate rebirth in the plane of misery.

The
opposite of slander, as the Buddha indicates, is speech that promotes
friendship and harmony. Such speech originates from a mind of
loving-kindness and sympathy. It wins the trust and affection of others,
who feel they can confide in one without fear that their disclosures
will be used against them. Beyond the obvious benefits that such speech
brings in this present life, it is said that abstaining from slander has
as its kammic result the gain of a retinue of friends who can never be
turned against one by the slanderous words of others.24

(3) Abstaining from harsh speech (pharusaya vacaya veramani).

He
avoids harsh language and abstains from it. He speaks such words as are
gentle, soothing to the ear, loving, such words as go to the heart, and
are courteous, friendly, and agreeable to many.25

Harsh
speech is speech uttered in anger, intended to cause the hearer pain.
Such speech can assume different forms, of which we might mention three.
One is abusive speech: scolding, reviling, or reproving another angrily
with bitter words. A second is insult: hurting another by ascribing to
him some offensive quality which detracts from his dignity. A third is
sarcasm: speaking to someone in a way which ostensibly lauds him, but
with such a tone or twist of phrasing that the ironic intent becomes
clear and causes pain.

The
main root of harsh speech is aversion, assuming the form of anger.
Since the defilement in this case tends to work impulsively, without
deliberation, the transgression is less serious than slander and the
kammic consequence generally less severe. Still, harsh speech is an
unwholesome action with disagreeable results for oneself and others,
both now and in the future, so it has to be restrained. The ideal
antidote is patience — learning to tolerate blame and criticism from
others, to sympathize with their shortcomings, to respect differences in
viewpoint, to endure abuse without feeling compelled to retaliate. The
Buddha calls for patience even under the most trying conditions:

Even
if, monks, robbers and murderers saw through your limbs and joints,
whosoever should give way to anger thereat would not be following my
advice. For thus ought you to train yourselves: “Undisturbed shall our
mind remain, with heart full of love, and free from any hidden malice;
and that person shall we penetrate with loving thoughts, wide, deep,
boundless, freed from anger and hatred.”26

(4) Abstaining from idle chatter (samphappalapa veramani).

He
avoids idle chatter and abstains from it. He speaks at the right time,
in accordance with facts, speaks what is useful, speaks of the Dhamma
and the discipline; his speech is like a treasure, uttered at the right
moment, accompanied by reason, moderate and full of sense.27

Idle
chatter is pointless talk, speech that lacks purpose or depth. Such
speech communicates nothing of value, but only stirs up the defilements
in one’s own mind and in others. The Buddha advises that idle talk
should be curbed and speech restricted as much as possible to matters of
genuine importance. In the case of a monk, the typical subject of the
passage just quoted, his words should be selective and concerned
primarily with the Dhamma. Lay persons will have more need for
affectionate small talk with friends and family, polite conversation
with acquaintances, and talk in connection with their line of work. But
even then they should be mindful not to let the conversation stray into
pastures where the restless mind, always eager for something sweet or
spicy to feed on, might find the chance to indulge its defiling
propensities.

The
traditional exegesis of abstaining from idle chatter refers only to
avoiding engagement in such talk oneself. But today it might be of value
to give this factor a different slant, made imperative by certain
developments peculiar to our own time, unknown in the days of the Buddha
and the ancient commentators. This is avoiding exposure to the idle
chatter constantly bombarding us through the new media of communication
created by modern technology. An incredible array of devices —
television, radio, newspapers, pulp journals, the cinema — turns out a
continuous stream of needless information and distracting entertainment
the net effect of which is to leave the mind passive, vacant, and
sterile. All these developments, naively accepted as “progress,”
threaten to blunt our aesthetic and spiritual sensitivities and deafen
us to the higher call of the contemplative life. Serious aspirants on
the path to liberation have to be extremely discerning in what they
allow themselves to be exposed to. They would greatly serve their
aspirations by including these sources of amusement and needless
information in the category of idle chatter and making an effort to
avoid them.