As we approach the various holidays of the dark season, let’s all brush up on our understanding of the Buddha’s advice for Wise Speech. It could keep us out of trouble.

Wise Speech is one of the three aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path that relate to virtue. 

Virtue may have the connotation of being prissy, goody-goody, or holier than thou. However, Wise Speech, Wise Action, and Wise Livelihood are not practiced to BE virtuous but to create harmony in the community. 

How often have you wished you hadn’t said something? Maybe a friendly conversation erupted into discord, and you’re baffled. What happened?

No truth = No trust
The first and most important is being truthful. Just as our parents taught us, honesty is the best policy. Of course, that policy doesn’t mean we have to tell everything to everybody. It just means that we don’t lie. We don’t intend to deceive anyone. Any intention to deceive is rooted in one of the Three Poisons: Greed, Aversion, or Delusion.
Most of us learned early on that lying is more trouble than it is worth. Keeping track of the lies is exhausting! And being found out is embarrassing and painful.
If we lie, trust disappears. Think about someone who lied to you. Will you ever believe them again? Lack of truth leads directly to lack of trust. It’s as simple as that. So. we own up to the facts, even if they put us in a bad light. Oops, I spilled the milk. And we take responsibility and clean it up. Letting down our guard and being honest about our foibles, failures, and weaknesses allows others to let down their guard. It creates a safe space to be together.

Expressing our opinions, as honestly as we might, is not the truth we’re discussing. These are our views, and though we are fortunate to have a right to speak them, let’s acknowledge that they are affected by many causes and conditions, so they are volatile and subject to change.

Not my story to tell
Next, the Buddha warned against engaging in slanderous speech. Talking about other people is common, but how often do the Three Poisons slip into casual conversation and sour what we say?

We could challenge ourselves not to talk about other people at all. If someone asks after them, we could just assure them that they are fine. This would suit many people, but suddenly shifting our conversational habits with close friends and family members might be jarring. We might be violating an unspoken intimacy contract, holding ourselves out, saying “Oh, I’m a Buddhist now. I don’t gossip. Sorry!” Okay, now they aren’t just annoyed with you but Buddhism! Thanks a lot!

But what to do? Infuse these conversations with lovingkindness for the person we are talking to. Focus on them and less on others. If there’s a demand to ‘dish’, that lovingkindness will soften it a bit. Add context, spacious awareness, and curiosity rather than condemnation. Why might the person being discussed be acting that way?

Being aware that ‘it’s not my story to tell’ helps us dial it back a bit. Speaking only the truth and not succumbing to mindless patterns laced with old grudges and opinions about the person will shorten the conversation. 

It would be a kindness not to put others in the position of having to talk about people. It seems like just common courtesy to ask about someone’s family. But how could we rephrase that question? Instead of wording that demands an answer to satisfy our curiosity, we might say, “I hope the family is doing well.” That opens the door but doesn’t kick it down, wanting all the juicy details.

Real gossip is often negative and intended to create ill will and division. It is rooted in aversion, resentment, or wanting to build ourselves up by putting someone else down.

But it’s interesting to notice how an innocent conversation about someone else goes from what they’ve been up to and how they’re doing to a discussion of their personality traits and what we think of them. So here’s a good way to think about it: How would I feel if I overheard two family members or two friends talking about me in this way? Would we be hurt or pleased?
Not surprisingly, it goes back to what our mothers always taught us (even if they didn’t always live by it themselves!): if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.

Ouch!
The third aspect of wise speech is abstaining from harsh speech uttered in anger and intended to cause pain: abusive speech, scolding, nagging, calling somebody out, and saying, “Oh, you always…” 

Another part of harsh speech is sarcasm, a defensive mechanism with a sharp edge that neither protects us nor creates harmonious relationships.

We might also have an inner voice that speaks to us this way. Our thoughts are just private speech. If we are mean to ourselves, that pattern will cause us to be mean to others.

Cultivating lovingkindness makes us less likely to engage in harsh speech. But some of it is habitual, so it’s good to just notice and set the wise intention to be kinder in our speech. And then, of course, we discover that kinder speech is much more effective in creating the change we want to see in our lives and in the world.

Chit Chat
The last aspect of Wise Speech is to avoid idle chatter. For those on a silent retreat, this is clear cut. And it’s so relaxing to release the need to engage. But out in the world, the Buddha acknowledged that we create bonds of affection and civility with people through idle chatter — “How are you today?” “Good to see you.” “Have a nice day,” etc. These exchanges are part of the web of social interaction.

But we can notice the sometimes overwhelming amount of idle chatter in the world we live in, coming from all our devices. As we become habituated to the incessant cacophony, we may even become unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with silence. It’s good to notice where we might nervously try to fill space with our words.

Bringing awareness into our speech allows us to ask ourselves, “Why am I talking?” Notice how it makes a handy acronym: W.A.I.T.

We can pause and ask ourselves What is my intention here? And as we speak, we can anchor our awareness in the body so we don’t go mindlessly into habituated patterns of reactivity. When we cultivate awareness, we find we can be responsive rather than reactive. We can recognize how that reactivity is often rooted in fear and defensiveness, wanting to shore up that separate sense of self. Responsiveness is collaborative and caring.

And one final note:
More important than the ‘gift of gab’ is the gift of deep listening. Instead of planning what we’ll say next while someone is talking, we just listen to them with full attention. We provide a safe place for whatever they are sharing to land, to be heard. There is indeed no greater gift.