Greetings,

This month we're moving into the second training aspect of the eightfold path, ethical conduct. It's broken up into three parts, right speech, right action. right livelihood. This month we're going to start with right speech. Just to keep us in the same flow, this path factor is about attuning or harmonizing our speech with the first three noble truths - the knowing of dukkha, the knowing of the cause of dukkha and the realization of the cessation of dukkha. Harmonizing our speech can show up in two ways. First we can harmonize with the nature of our speech and the Buddha gave five qualities to attend to. Second, you can harmonize with the felt sense of speech through establishing mindfulness with the four foundations.

Practicing with right speech is often misunderstood and treated like learning some type of good communication tool, like Nonviolent Communication or Say What You Mean, etc. But right speech, in my opinion, is not about communication. It's about the energy or the mind state behind your communication. So even if you are using soft, kind words, but your intention is based in greed, hatred and delusion, you are not in harmony with the four noble truths and your speech is not right speech. Buddha offered a guide to attune to right speech. Is your speech spoken at the right time. Is it spoken in truth. Is it spoken affectionately. Is it spoken beneficially. And, is it spoken with a mind of goodwill. Using this framing, you could say something that's very painful to hear but is clearly within right speech. It's what happens often when people have to tell others hard truths. In that same vein, you could share something in a practice meeting in an affectionate way, in a beneficial way, during the appropriate time, and you could even have your mind in a kind space, but it's not true. It's an exaggeration of a practice moment. This happens to us on retreat all the time and it's not in harmony with our practice. The point is, using this framing, you learn to reflect upon the quality of your speech and without judgment, shaming or blaming, you attune truthfully to what you are actually saying. One of the best practices for learning how to do this is Insight Dialogue. Insight Dialogue is a meditative practice that uses six guidelines (pause, relax/soften, open, attune to emergence, listen deeply, and speak the truth). These guidelines are generally practiced in relationship with another practitioner. But I taught myself to practice them in relationship with my body as the other practitioner. This meant I would pause and soften, open to whatever was happening here in the present moment; I would listen to what was happening, and; I would speak to myself in a truthful way. Or I would ask myself to tell me what was going on and I would wait and be open until I heard the body tell me what was going on. By practicing in this way, I learned to attune to what was true, what was beneficial, what was affectionate and kind, and what was not.

Right speech isn't always about saying the right thing. Sometimes it is just important to say the wrong thing so you know definitively that that is not in keeping with your values around the eightfold path. Attunement - this is the point of the path. Not to judge your behavior one way or the other. These path factors are training wheels so you can learn where the edges of the path are. This is why I picked the picture below. You can tell these are four speech bubbles, but there aren't any words. You just see the quality of the bubbles and you have to attune to what is being said.

This path factor is very nuanced, layered and complex. It's not about just what you say out loud. It's also about what you think and the speech you take in (i.e., your tv shows, your friends or the people around you, what you read, etc.). This is the second way right speech shows up. It's in the recognition of what speech is doing to you. Right speech is the first layer in this ethical conduct training. Speech is tied to action. The Buddha said that what you obsess over becomes the inclination of your heartmind and the inclination of your heartmind becomes the motivation behind your actions. This way of practicing with right speech is pointed towards recognizing the link between the words around you and your actions. Spinning in aversiveness leads to angry reactions. Being around angry people creates aversion within us. I think the point Buddha is making is that thinking and listening is the same as speaking. Oftentimes we would never say something harsh and mean and cruel out loud. But we can go around thinking it all day long. We can listen to other people talk like that all day long. And somehow, we believe that we're not affected by it. This is not entirely true. You have to look at what you're attuning to and oftentimes when we're around a lot of aversion, we're attuning to aversion. When we're around a lot of wanting, we start attuning to our wanting. And finally, if we ignore the speech going on around us, we become deluded with the truth of our own conduct.

Buddha was acutely aware of his thinking mind. He spoke in great detail of how he divided his thoughts into thoughts that were based in sensuality, ill will and harmfulness/heedlessness and those that were imbued with renunciation, non-ill will and harmlessness/heedfulness. He taught about how he divided them up and how he watched what happened to him when such thoughts were present. He also taught in many different ways about the hindrances and the nature of the mind's reactivity. He gave numerous examples of what happens to a mind clouded by hindrances. And he even used mind, and most notably the thinking mind, as a third foundation of mindfulness, noting that one should know what is affecting the mind and when the mind is not affected by something. These are all examples of paying attention to the thinking or words around your mind. The attunement comes with knowing when the mind is affected by something and when it is not and taking care with what the mind is dwelling on.

This is what we're practicing this month. This attunement to what we say, and the attunement to the words around us. We'll talk about it in different ways and see what comes up.

With a deep bow,

Tuere