seventh world of chan buddhism - Zen Buddhist Order of Hsu Yun

THIRD STEP ON THE PATH
CHAPTER 13
RIGHT SPEECH
A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it just begins to live that day.
- Emily Dickinson
Speech does our dirty work for us. In our quest for status, we are all confidence men.
We lie, make promises, flatter, exaggerate, gossip, insult, twist truth or omit it, and employ
speech in whatever way we can to further our ego's ambitions. No one should find it
surprising that all religions prescribe silence in rather large doses when treating the maladies
of speech.
Silence, however, is not an antidote to poisonous speech. Just as we don't control
anger by counting to ten when we feel anger rise, but merely use this 10count demilitarized
time-zone as an opportunity to reconsider the situation, thereby destroying anger at its roots,
so we don't use silence to control the problems of speech. Silence merely gives our tongue a
sabbatical which our brain can put to good use. Analyzing the reasons we feel so compelled
to contribute our thoughts, vocally or in script, privately or to the world at large, is the way
we use Right Speech to achieve non-attachment. Usually, when we examine our desire to
speak, we discover our ego's intention to gain status for itself.
Some speech transgressions are easy to spot.
In the January 1981 edition of Ten Directions, a publication of the Zen Center of Los
Angeles and the Institute for Transcultural Studies, an unsigned cartoon strip titled `Zen
Living' appears.
Four figures are in each frame: Two young, black-robed Buddhist priests who are
speaking to a longhaired layman, and a man who is sitting nearby reading a newspaper.
One priest says to the layman, "I've really been seeing how my ideas and
preconceptions are just the attempts of the ego to assert itself... I mean, the ego is just SO
insignificant!"
The second priest continues, "Yeah, I know what you mean! And what gets me is that
I spend so much energy on these trivial concerns that are all based on this false sense that the
CHAPTER 13 RIGHT SPEECH
S EVENTH W ORLD O F C HAN B UDDHISM
148