Donald Rothberg: Practicing the Wise Speech Guideline of Truthfulness: Four Dimensions of Practice 2

So ready to continue on with wise speech so may I May I manifest wise speech In my talk and may we manifest in our discussion? No, I think I I may have mentioned last time that I once taught a Group wise speech for about six months. We just worked with the four guidelines for wise speech being truthful being helpful coming from a kind heart and also especially having good timing and during that time Right next to my telephone. I would have the four guidelines whenever the telephone rang I would I would say to myself truthful helpful Good heart Good timing. Hello So you can do that practice that was what evolved naturally so doing that for all those months it really Really was one way of having the practice of wise speech be much more but We'll win into woven into the day So what I want to do today is to continue with the exploration of wise speech particularly in terms of the guideline of truthfulness And look at that In on in several dimensions including personal practice Including how we can really understand the guideline to being truthful It's not just important personally and for ourselves and the people immediately next to us, but actually as a fundamental Resource For a healthy community and a healthy world Not always evident Right, so that's what I'll explore more. I'll also want to hear of from the people who worked in the last week on Trying to practice with truthfulness In everyday life how many people did give some attention to that in the last week? Yeah There's several of you. Yeah, very good Again what it partly this emphasis on wise speech is related to wanting to emphasize the importance of ethical practice You know that mentioned a number of times In the traditional teachings of the Buddha Ethical practice is one of the three main forms of practice Or I should say one of the three main forms. Yeah There's training in wisdom. These are all interwoven together. There's training in wisdom There's training in meditation and there's training in what we could call ethical practice one of my Colleagues who is a teacher in England Nathan Glide Liked to use the word instead of ethical practice training in care being caring some for some people But the term ethics means following rules and it sounds like a little bit tight, right? So use the language that that worked for you But we can we can see that you know when we look at the teaching of the Noble Aid full path There are actually two wisdom factors wise understanding and wise intention three meditation factors and You know wise Concentration wise mindfulness and also wise or skillful effort and then there are three ethical dimensions right at the heart of the understanding of training training in the ethical precepts Training in wise speech wise speech is named as one of the eight core areas of training. That's interesting, isn't it? Did anyone think that the practitioners at the time of the Buddha that he was training just were silent all the time? No, they were taught they were they were yapping away Some you know they were I'm joking a little bit, but when you read the text they were quite frequently invited to dinner parties By local people right and so so the you know Can wonder why was wise speech so central where they were talking they were a community so very very central and the You know the core ethical precepts. I think are familiar to us. These are the Guidelines of non-harming particularly non-killing Not stealing not taking that which is not given Care with sexuality, you know for the monastics this meant celibacy Wise speech is one of the ethical precepts and then last was we for our times We would say care with substances which have consciousness which for again for For the monastics and for some people just met meant abstinence I've also spoken about how in my view and the view of others Generally ethical practice has been somewhat marginalized in Western Buddhism Personally, I think this is unfortunate You know that the emphasis has been on meditation primarily Which you know I love and I've spent a big chunk of my life actually on retreat. I probably have spent Something like seven or eight years total of my life in silent meditation So does that mean that I I think I love meditation for me it does I love meditation, but I would also say that Ethical practice for different reasons has been marginalized Not given so much attention you know, I Was looking at some old writing my colleague go Franz fell Did an essay about how ethics was neglected, you know over 20 years ago He wrote an essay and he did a search of the talks at the website Darmacy, which is the record of the Talks people given he found very very few of them have to do with ethical practice. They're mostly focused on meditation You know, we even often call Centers like spirit rock you go to spirit rock you'll see a sign that says spirit rock meditation center another sent friend connected with East Bay Meditation Center, which If you think of the free forms of training those are both inaccurate, but on the other hand We can see how meditation Is particularly what draws so many people You know, and there are many I think there are many reasons for this, you know, I'm aware for example that the meditative dimension of Western religions particularly Judaism and Christianity have generally been lost or Really extremely marginalized in the last three or four hundred years. I Had one friend who's Jewish who was interested in studying authentic Jewish Meditation and mystical teachings Took him ten years to find an adequate teacher of that You could say the same you know the same things Christian contemplation I think it's more much more available now But 20 30 40 years ago It's hard to find you know, I go out for example to the Abbey of Kassemine in Kentucky. I'll go there in a few weeks Where Thomas Merton the greatest Christian contemplative of the 20th century was a monk and One of the few places where you would really learn Christian contemplation for you know Better probably 150 years you wouldn't so I can understand why meditation is so popular but there has been this marginalization of the ethical dimension and It's helpful to really see that it's extremely important. I think both personally and also socially You know that it in some ways You know ethical practice is a way of protecting ourselves and others you can really see it as a way of Creating safety. It's kind of most obvious When one does a retreat You know that you know people Take What we call the the ethical valves to follow the ethical guidelines And it takes that sense of safety to be able to go deeply inwardly We need a sense of safety where you know at the You know at the retreat center, we know that people are telling the truth that they're not trying to Hurt us There's no, you know, we won't receive sexual advances from other retreatants. We're protected in that way And so forth, you know that there's a sense of protection You know a sense of relative safety, you know Again from that essay by Gil Franz del he said when I teach the precepts to children I call them the five protections Avoiding moral judgments, I explained that the precepts offer protections from problems and anxiety. I Tell them I have met adults who wish they had used the precepts as protection from foolish or impulsive behavior So the precepts can be there when I'm about to you know, for example with wise speech I'm about to say something out of some anger or frustration And I asked myself would this be following wise speech And I decide not to say it, you know that being said as I think as I mentioned last time Following wise speech for example, there's not about being a nicey-nice. We can still say things which are Raising important questions Difficult questions, but we can do so skillfully, right? So it doesn't mean just shying away from all difficulties or conflicts In fact, how to use skillful speech with differences or problems with conflicts is It's actually a major Area when I teach wise speech in Retreats and in more, you know over six months for example, we focus on how do we bring wise speech to difficult situations? And why speech is also quite wonderful In that when we take wise speech seriously and have it as a primary form of practice We suddenly have Many hours a day for spiritual practice, you know, I think I asked the question last time how many people have complained Oh, it's really hard to find a half an hour for meditation. Anyone ever complain like that? yeah, and Guess what if you practice wise speech or what one of my colleagues called right yabbering If you practice wise speech you may and that this includes speaking online and so forth Digital speech so to speak we suddenly have multiple hours. What it's what's it like if you have an intention to do wise speech when you're Doing electronic communications so it can be a really really central area. I want to just very briefly situate focusing on Truthfulness in the context of the foundations of wise speech so first of all there are I think I speak of there being four foundations first is the four guidelines that I've mentioned given by the Buddha following those Secondly and this is a little more challenging or difficult and I do have that Series of talks that I gave in July and August of 2023 which are on the website Dharma seed that That looks at what I'm just about to mention so you can find those there are public and available The second foundation is learning to be present As we speak this actually wasn't taught by the Buddha But how do I develop a kind of inner awareness? As I'm also acting outwardly so I can know oh You know even in the midst of speech I can notice oh, I am angry or that irritated me where I have reactivity Or I have love or care. How do we develop a sense of presence? That's Not so easy to develop, but it's something we can do you know when I teach I try to have inner awareness like right now So it's not just Intellectual but connected with my body and my heart That's that's something which can take some time to develop and grounding in the body and Learning to ground further in the bodies especially important You know a third guide a third foundation I work with which I'll just be which I've talked about at other times is actually a little more contemporary integration of Buddhist wise speech with nonviolent communication which I've been teaching on for about 20 years and Typically with colleagues who are Trained in nonviolent communication for me particularly this involves bringing in a sense of what I call empathy practice as a core practice and then the last foundation is bringing all this to Working with difficulties, okay so let's go to the five Guidelines From the Buddha and then particularly the truthfulness for the rest of the time and look at that further than we did last time This is from the Buddha a Statement endowed with five factors as well spoken not all spoken. It is blameless and unfaulted by knowledgeable people which five And so listen for being truthful being helpful Coming out of a good heart and I'm hearing two expressions of that so actually I would say they're four here and then lastly Good timely good timing So here's the Buddha's answer. What are the ways that we develop wise speech? It is spoken at the right time The timeliness it is spoken in truth Truthfulness it is spoken affectionately coming out of a good heart. It is spoken beneficially helpfulness it is spoken with a mind of goodwill I also see that was coming out of a good heart and the key here is that all of them have to be there together Really crucial we can we can be truthful Sometimes with negative motivation, right? We sometimes call this dumping I can say something really truthful so someone with the intention to hurt them Anyone Experience that yourself at times, you know being truthful, but with negative motivation. So The key point here is that all four have to be together. I could imagine also I Could be very caring and kind to someone I could Basically tell say things which are not true Because I think if they'll make the person feel good so there can be really sincere kindness Without truthfulness and I think the teachings are that would not be skillful as anyone sometimes Coming out of real sincere kindness or care Said some things which were not not truthful anyone can think of situations like that, right? So we want to look at this and try to have all four of them together So I'll look at truthfulness again take it further look at it in terms of individual practice Look at it in terms of how actually truthfulness also points to how we are with others in our communities and in our society You know and then we want to look thirdly just look at what we see in terms of truthfulness and how Fourthly how much I how much I act I'm going a little bit over some of what I covered. I'll take it further How do we act in our communities and our society? As well as in our personal practice to develop truthfulness And what I'll say is that I think that the ethical practice of wise speech particularly here particularly fallen truthfulness really involves both a personal dimension I Should say a personal dimension a relational dimension and a more social dimension If we want to develop wise speech as an ethical practice We can practice in all three of those areas No, I'll just refer to Going into wise speech in the Japanese tradition There's a saying that every word that we speak has spirit And when we speak a word we share its spirit with others I like that. So the Buddha untruthfulness Abandoning false speech when upstains from false speech one speaks truth one adheres to truth is Trustworthy and reliable one is no deceiver of the world And I think I gave this last time the Buddha said Rohula, that's his son. He's told his son you should train us. I will not utter a falsehood even as a joke That's a pretty strong statement One doesn't this is the Buddha continuing one doesn't consciously tell a lie for one's own sake for the sake of another over the sake of any reward and We'll come back to the question which we looked at especially last time right away the question came up Are there exceptions to truthfulness? I don't hear that from the Buddha But in later Buddhist traditions there were sometimes exceptions to Being truthful there was a text In the Mahayana tradition called some of you may know called the Lotus Sutra where a Father Saw that his children were in a burning house And he said please come out of the house if you come out of the house I Will give you I will give you carts Pulled by donkeys. I will give them to you. They came out of the house He gave them a cart, but he didn't give them the donkeys so That's from about you know 1500 years ago a story and It was said in the text that he did not because his motives were good He did not tell a false it Interesting whereas in other Mahayana traditions. It said that one has to Follow this completely. You know in one text it says a Bodhisattva Someone who's committed to helping others and awakening oneself Can break all of the ethical precepts except for being truthful so it's a very central one So there are some different views on that the wealth also Different views actually in other traditions and in the Jewish tradition Being truthful is very very very central it's exactly said That you know, this is I think in the Talmud that truth is quote-unquote the signature of God But in the Jewish tradition Peace or Shalom Can be a higher value that sometimes in rare situations supersedes being truthful And of course we have being truthful in the Ten Commandments You know where where it was originally for situations in legal courts, but it got extended really to Being completely truthful in all aspects of our lives and so How do we practice being truthful and what do we found what do we find you know I mentioned Earlier that you know I think in the guided practice that we want to look at not just when we're Telling an outright falsehood, but are there's probably more likely for us are there situations when I exaggerate Maybe for the self of self image, right? Are there times when I tell a half-truth? Are there times when I have omissions where I simply don't say something that was true Where I might say it right and I think all of these Situations we can think of them as a way of practicing now. There are many many ways to practice the guideline of truthfulness we can We can remember the guideline maybe Especially for in the training time we want to really work with the guideline we can remember it in the morning Remember in the afternoon I commit to being truthful You can remember it like that we can do what I did on my telephone You know every time you know before a meeting I can I can say truthful helpful Good heart good timing Right. I think I mentioned last time when I was teaching in graduate school We sometimes had difficult communications and we had discussion I mentioned these guidelines and they asked me The faculty asked me to give a five minute talk on why speech and put the guidelines on a Marker board and read them at the beginning of every meeting Right, so you can bring the guidelines into social situations You know you have a family gathering You can put a sign up in the home truthful helpful kind good, you know good timing I don't know anyone want to do that Yeah, it's interesting isn't it you know, but how do we how do we make the guidelines come alive? When I think very very helpful to work with the guidelines before difficult speech situations I'm going to be in a difficult meeting at work Can I remember the guidelines again? It's not about being nice and nice We can also work with the guidelines in terms of mindfulness particularly being truthful I can really say I want to notice when I'm not truthful or when there's something like a You know half truth or exaggeration Right at that moment. Can I be mindful? What's happening? Donald you're exaggerating for the sake of self-image Look into it be mindful stop Maybe bring it up later. You know what was going on there? We want to notice was you know was there a self-image involved? You know what's going on was I you know? Maybe had a good intention. How do I work with this? I You know so we really want to use these Aspects of being truthful Partly to cultivate mindfulness you know and again, you know We were looking at last time at the question of exceptions and I think One of the answers that I think we looked at last time was When you know, I think we had the example of an ice agent asked you to say where the people are There's the option You know do you tell a lie? There's also the option of staying silent But that was I think that was a question that came up last time Right kind of an extreme example You know we're uh being truthful might lead to someone being harmed Right, what do you do? And do you tell a lie? Maybe telling the lie would make it less likely the person would be harmed No, or is there an option also of being of being silent? Now you'll also just wanted also to mention I mentioned the intention of truthfulness in Judaism and Christianity some Also, I did some research on how it is in Islam And Being truthful very very parallel. It's a core ethical obligation in Islam And I wanted to read it a quote If this is from the Quran Do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know while you know the truth And it was very interesting before The person who became the prophet Muhammad Became the prophet upon his mission He was known in his community very interesting was known in this community as al-ameen Which translates as the trustworthy Isn't that interesting? The prophet Muhammad before taking on that mission was known as the trustworthy and also as al-sadiq The truthful one I find that really really interesting Hmm, and there was a sense. This is going to my next point that there's True of a way we