This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Mindfulness of Speech - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Welcome everyone to IMC, and for those of you online who are also attending, welcome. It’s my pleasure to talk about mindful speaking.
One of the joys of this work that I do is when people come to me and say, “Well, this mindfulness meditation is good, but how do we apply it to life? How do I integrate it into the rest of my life, not just in meditation?” One of the really significant ways is to practice mindful speaking. In fact, I think that mindful speaking is just mindfulness out loud.
If you practice mindfulness by yourself internally, you’re just recognizing what’s really happening there in a truthful way, and learning to recognize what’s happening not only truthfully but also in a way that’s useful and beneficial. It benefits you to recognize it in a way that’s kind and supportive of you. It’s certainly possible to know what’s going on inside and treat it as bad, unwelcome news, and one more reason to be critical of yourself. Mindfulness is turning that around and using mindfulness as a way to start having a positive relationship with oneself, so that something different can happen that couldn’t happen if we’re critical, angry, upset, or caught in greed and all kinds of things.
The same thing applies in our external world. We’re learning how to be mindful out loud. One of the reasons why mindfulness of speaking is so useful is that it helps you understand yourself better. It’s a way of looking and understanding, tracking what you’re saying and why you say it. Many people speak without really much care for what they say. There’s a little quote that goes around sometimes that says that many people take more care in how they dress than what they say. But what we say has a much bigger impact on our life and our communal life than how we dress.
So, to start seeing, “What am I doing here when I speak? What motivates it? Why am I saying what I’m about to say?” creates a tremendously useful window into your inner life. Why am I saying this, really? You might say, “Well, the person asked me a question, so I’m just answering the question.” But then if you look more deeply, you might see, “I want the person to like me. I want the person to see that I am knowledgeable.” There are all these different motivations operating at the same time. So, to stop and have the ability to take a deeper look, to track what’s going on as it’s going on, is very useful.
Another area where mindful speaking is useful is in pacing your day. If you go about the day at the speed of mindful speaking, how fast would you do things? How fast would you speak? Maybe you want to speak fast and furiously, but if you want to bring mindfulness into your life, then you might want to consider the speed at which you speak. Any speed is fine for mindfulness practice, provided you can track it while you’re saying it. You can track it before you say it, tracking the impulses and what’s inside of you, and then you can live more wisely. There’s a lot of self-understanding and a lot of development and growth of mindfulness that happens if we begin practicing it in our social and communal life.
Another reason for mindfulness of speech is so that we can create good relationships with the people around us and with the world, so that we can create a better world. Speech has a big impact on other people and ourselves, on the world we live in. Rather than creating more animosity, more hurt, more conflict, can we speak in a way that does the opposite—that creates more concord, more friendship, more healing in this world, more unity rather than divisiveness? If you’re able to track your speech, then you can begin seeing, “Is this really what I want to say? Is this the best way of saying it? Is there a better way of saying it?”
In the Buddhist tradition, there are guidelines or signposts offered to track what you’re saying and the questions to ask yourself. This could be as you’re speaking, but a place where it can be even harder to do this than in speaking is in emails or texting, where it doesn’t have to be as quick. Socially, long periods of silence are kind of awkward, but to be silent for 10 minutes and not respond right away is not such a big deal. You can take a little while, maybe even compose something and not send it, and come back five minutes later and ask, “Is this what I want to do? What’s the impact? What does this express?”
Then you can ask yourself these questions:
There’s sometimes a fifth one that’s offered, and that is—I don’t know if I really know what the Pali1 word means, but some translators translate it as “gentle.” It’s possible it means beautiful, it’s possible it means polite. So, the most common translation is: Is it gentle speech? Is it polite speech?
The first one is, is it timely? Is it the right time for something? That goes very closely connected to this idea of, is it effective? Is it useful to say what I’m going to say? Some things are important to say, but the timing of when you say it is really important. People might not be ready to hear it; they might not be able to process it and respond to it. If you say it turning your head as you leave, “Hey, by the way…” and then you’re off running to catch the bus, there’s no processing, no chance to work with it, interact with it, clarify it, or hear their response. So, is it the right time to say something?
I receive emails sometimes that were, in some ways, not the right time because email is not a good way to communicate the nuance of attitude and emotions behind what’s being said. I’ve misread an emotion, either didn’t see the emotion in it or saw emotions that weren’t there. So, is this the right time to communicate what I want to communicate? Maybe a phone call is better. Maybe there’s another way. Maybe wait. There are sometimes that I have waited a long time to have an important conversation with someone because I felt that they were closed to having it. It didn’t make any sense. I had every right to say something, you would think, but being right doesn’t mean it’s going to work. So, to ask yourself that question is difficult for some of us because the impulse to speak can be quite strong. I see it when I’m ready to speak before a person has stopped speaking. I don’t know if any of you have that issue. Sometimes in a social conversation, I don’t really hear the second half of what they’re saying because in my mind, I’m telling them what I feel is important to say. So, to take time and listen. That’s one question that slows you down: is this the right time?
The second is, is it the truth? That has a multi-layered consideration. What is the truth? Is how you feel the truth? Maybe it’s true as a feeling, but maybe it’s not true as a judgment. And that line between an emotion or feeling we have and it being the truth about a situation out there—the lens through which we see it—is a kind of ambiguous world. Sometimes what we say, we’re saying what’s true. “I feel that you’re awful.” That was a true statement, right? I had this feeling. But actually, it’s a judgment. And maybe it’s welling up quite powerfully as a strong impulse inside, but you have to be very careful. Is that really true? What might be more true is to say, “Hearing what you have to say, I’m feeling quite uncomfortable. I feel unsettled now. I wonder if we can talk about it.” That’s getting closer to the truth. But then you ask the question, is it timely to say that? Maybe not. Maybe some people, when they hear that you’re uncomfortable, it makes them so uncomfortable they shut down or leave.
Is all truth right to say? Some people feel that they are justified to say something if it’s true. But that leads to the next guideline: is it beneficial? Is it useful? Is it strategic? Is it effective? I’ve thought about this sometimes in political discourse. People can be right, or they believe they’re right. They have a right to say what they’re going to say; they have justice on their side, so of course, they should speak up. But is it effective? What’s the impact it’s going to have? Is the impact beneficial? A lot of political discourse, in all kinds of directions, people feel it’s true, they feel it’s just to say it, but it’s received in a way that is actually counterproductive. You might be yelling and screaming because you feel you have every right to say something, and maybe you do, but the question is, is it effective? Is it beneficial? And then you can ask yourself, beneficial in what way? If it’s simply to make yourself safe, that’s certainly sometimes important to do. But is that the only thing that’s necessary? What about the relationship you have with the other person? Can you create a friendly, mutually supportive relationship?
And so then the other guideline is, is there mettā2? Is there goodwill in the communication we have? Goodwill means that we also care about the other person’s welfare; we want them to be happy. That’s a high bar because “they don’t deserve it.” “They’ve disrespected me, they’re in the wrong, they really messed up and caused a lot of trouble, and they were mean. So of course, they don’t deserve any goodness from me. They’ve now forfeited all rights to receive anything good from me, and I’m going to give them a piece of my mind.” People don’t think that way, I don’t think, but sometimes they operate that way because we don’t stop to look and think, “What are we doing here? What’s going on here?” The impulse to speak sometimes is so strong and unexamined. So the Buddha keeps emphasizing: examine what’s going on when you speak. Look at it.
So can you have goodwill? Can you aim to create a healthy relationship here? Can you somehow break through the meanness or the closeness or the hostility that might be here? It’s not an easy thing to do, but maybe it’s better than making the situation worse. Sometimes the best way to deal with all these criteria is not to speak, just be silent. One of the guidelines is if speaking is going to make it worse, maybe don’t say anything. Some people will protest, “But you have to speak! You have to fight for the good cause, you have to set things right!” But maybe if you’re making the situation worse, you don’t speak. Maybe you wait.
This is where mindfulness of speaking comes into play in a big way. Mindful speaking also means knowing how to speak at the right time, the first criterion, which might mean after you’ve paused for a while. After you’ve been silent for a while. After you say, “Can I take a breath or two? Can we pause? That had a big impact on me. Before I speak, can we just take three breaths together?” Or, “Can I take three breaths?” and then I’ll try to respond. Just some kind of pause.
I’ve done that in difficult conversations with people where I was triggered. I thought to myself, “You know, Gil, right now you’re not going to say good things. You’re not capable of it.” And I asked permission. I said to the person I’m having this very difficult conversation with, “This is difficult, and could we pause for a while? Can we just sit here and breathe for a little bit?” The last time this happened, the person was very gracious and said yes. I think the person trusted me with that; maybe they thought they were going to be treated better. So I took about two or three minutes to get my breath back, get my senses back, and then I could continue the conversation. Otherwise, it was not going to work.
So sometimes, not speaking. And then, can we speak with goodwill? Can we care about the other person’s welfare as well? One reflection I do sometimes is that when someone is hostile or mean, they’re hurting. Chances are that their meanness and hostility represent some suffering they have. Does that justify that they’re mean or hostile? No. But to know that means, “Oh, they’re hurting. Of course, I want to care for them. They’re hurting. I don’t want to make it worse.” Can we find another way to have this conversation? Can we talk in a way that fosters some kind of mutual understanding, some mutual care for each other, some kind of friendliness?
And then the last criterion is to be gentle, to have beautiful speech, kind speech. I’ve said it already, but beautiful speech, polite speech. Some people say this is the opposite of harsh speech. Harsh speech is speech where just the tone of it is harmful. So can you use a tone of voice which makes space for people, that is not domineering, not filling the space, but makes room for a dialogue to go on?
Of course, you don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to. But if you have the question, “How do I bring my mindfulness practice into my social life, my community life?” this is a really effective way. It’s not easy for most people. For some people, it seems like mindfulness of speaking is the most difficult area of life to be mindful in because when we’re talking, we get pulled into our concerns, our emotional life, our impulses, our desires. There’s such a complex world that we get pulled into in relationship to other people that sometimes we’re not really tracking ourselves very well.
But the benefits of doing it are immense, huge. We learn about ourselves. We learn how to stay balanced in ourselves, stay healthy in ourselves, to stay closer to a place of well-being. We don’t give up on ourselves when you’re mindful of speaking, tracking it. We create better relationships in the world, relationships that have a feedback loop where they come back to benefit us. The more we can develop friendly relationships with other people, the more we can…
I had a conversation recently with this person with whom, many years ago, I had that difficult conversation where I had to ask, “Can we pause?” I was pretty angry, so it was a difficult time. And she said, “Gil, you’ve always been so supportive of me and so accepting of me, and I just feel your love for me.” And I said, “But… but we had that time.” And she said, “Yeah, yeah, that didn’t matter. Your good intent was there.” So somehow, that relationship continued and is now a warm, friendly relationship in a nice way.
So, mindfulness of speaking. That’s the topic. And so now you get to practice it. For those of you who want to stay—and those of you who don’t want to be part of this can just sit quietly or get some water and just hang out until we come back—the invitation is for you to go into small groups of maybe three people. Just look around you and make your groups, and make sure no one is left alone. Make sure everyone’s included. And then maybe you could offer some words of your own experience or inspiration for mindful speaking. What have you learned so far? Or in what way are you inspired by these words today or other ways to find a way to be more carefully attentive, more deeply attentive to speaking as you speak?
Okay, so we’ll do that for about 10 minutes, and then we’ll ring a bell and we’ll come back as a group as a whole and have a few more words, and then we’ll stop in time for the potluck. So thank you.
…
So how much mindfulness of speech was there? It’s possible to talk about mindful speaking and not be mindful while you’re doing it. But it was very nice; it felt like a nice, happy set of conversations to witness from here.
Any questions or comments about this topic?
Questioner 1: I have a question. We were talking about feeling the need to fill the silence in conversations. I feel the need to do that. I can be mindful, but those awkward silences and pauses in conversations are where I have trouble taking a step back.
Gil Fronsdal: So, a lot of people are not comfortable with silences, and so you might have to contextualize it for people. You could say, “You know, we’ve been talking for a while now, and I need to get my bearings. I wonder, can we be quiet for a little bit?” Or, “Can I excuse myself for a moment?” The really sly thing to do is to say, “Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom.” No one’s going to ask you what you’re doing there. The reason you need to go to the bathroom is you want to pause the conversation, and then you’ve gotten a free pass to have two, three, five minutes alone to process. So yes, it is hard in these conversations. Also, it depends on where you have the conversations. Sometimes if you invite the person to go for a walk with you, it’s easier to have longer pauses than if you’re sitting facing each other.
Questioner 1: I’m thinking of the context of a new social environment where you feel pressure to speak to somebody you don’t know. I will go into those situations and be anxious and then probably say too much or overshare because I’m filling the space.
Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, the social world is a difficult world to be in, so it’s not easy to say, “This is what you can do.” The expectations and the cultures can be so different, and people are anxious. Everyone’s nervous, so everyone’s trying to cope. But there are a few things that are sometimes helpful. One is to show an interest in them. You can be quiet because you’ve asked them questions and they’re talking. People appreciate your interest, and then you’re kind of off the hook for a little while, so you can process. And maybe as you’re listening to them, you can practice active listening, where you not only ask them questions but you also affirm what they’re saying. You could just say something like, “Oh, so you’re new here.” There are things you can say that might slow the conversation down so that you’re not on the center stage, feeling like you have to say something about yourself or something wise. Just ask them. That can help.
Questioner 2: Thanks, Gil. It’s great and smooth when you talk; it seems easy that it will work. But in reality, when it comes to family, it never works. For me, what’s somewhat working is just accepting them and just accepting the way they are. With family, friends, and everything else, it’s so easy. Just accepting and then not thinking about myself too much. But the relationship does change. There’s nothing I can do about it.
Gil Fronsdal: It sounds like you’re finding your way with your family, how to be with them. The relationship changes, even if I’m quiet. I don’t feel like I can really say anything because every family is going to have very different dynamics and different capacities. You’ve been working with it for a while, so it sounds like you’re finding your way. But you might, for yourself internally, ask yourself those questions: “Is this the time to bring something up?” Imagine sometimes you bring it up and ask, “Is this the time? Is this effective or useful to say this now? And is there a better, more useful time or more useful way of saying it?” So you might have more agency around when you speak and how you speak than what other people contribute and expect. Sometimes you can plan what you’re going to say. It’s usually best not to try to memorize it, but you can think it out ahead of time. So if you have kids, maybe when they’re at school, think about how you need to talk to them about cleaning their room. When do you do that? What’s a good time to do it? When do you think you can get their attention in a way that they really can take it in? “Oh, you know, if I make their favorite cookie and lay it out on the kitchen table in a nice way, they have to come and sit at the kitchen table to eat their cookie.” And it might be there’s a little space to say something. “By the way, I know I’ve brought up this issue of your room, but I want to let you know that it kind of hurts me to have this never taken care of.” So you kind of create the conditions for the conversation. There’s a lot of thinking ahead sometimes.
Questioner 3: My question is how to not have a checklist approach. It’s a lot of work to constantly ask these five questions to myself in every single conversation. I’ve been trying to practice it for a while. Is there a simpler way, like just being with the body or being with the breath?
Gil Fronsdal: I think that’s a very good question. The idea of being more centered in your body, mindful of your body, usually creates more space to see what’s happening in the mind, see what the impulses are, and so you can be wiser about it. Your innate wisdom might operate just fine to take care of the situation. It might also be, though, that if you give some time reflecting and thinking about these five categories, maybe one at a time, that after a while they become second nature. They operate on their own; you don’t have to go through the list. It’s just that as you give yourself more space to be present, they’re kind of there in the background, and it’s kind of obvious after a while that you’re oriented that way.
Questioner 4: This is kind of a follow-on to that, but I see the value of right speech and thinking about these things, but when I think about doing it in the midst of a conversation, it feels terribly artificial. Am I going to slow down the conversation and say, “Wait, wait, wait, I have to go through my five criteria?”
Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, that’s kind of artificial. But as I said, these things can become second nature after a while, so you don’t have to think about them. It’s just like they waft up. It’s like you can see, “Oh, this is not kind,” and “It must be that I should be quiet until a kinder thing comes up to say,” or “This is not true.” So it becomes second nature after a while, hopefully. And then, as was just said, just being grounded in your body, being centered and present here for your own experience, goes a long way to create the space for a kind of natural wisdom to operate. If we’re losing ourselves in a conversation, chances are you’ve lost touch with your body. The body gives us a lot of information about what goes on interpersonally: the tensions in the body, the postures of the body, the agitations in the body, the warmth in the body, the softness that comes in. There’s a lot of information there that informs us about our relationship to what’s going on. And the more we can take that in, the wiser we’ll be in the conversation.
Okay, well, I’m very confident that you’ll have lots of opportunities to practice. Just doing a little bit of it can go a long way. Don’t tie yourself in knots with all these criteria, but just starting to open up this door of mindfulness of speaking is a powerful door. It’s invaluable. And in the process, you’ll learn a lot about yourself, and as you learn about yourself, you’ll be wiser about the things you say and how you say them.
So everyone’s welcome to stay for the potluck. Whether you brought anything for it or not, it’s just an excuse for us to get together and be friendly and get to know each other. It’ll take a few minutes to do the final setup, and then there’ll be some indication that we can start. I think there’s a circle that’s formed, and there’s some blessing for the food that goes on. Probably in about five minutes or so. In the meantime, you can talk and hang out. Thank you.
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is the language of the earliest Buddhist scriptures. ↩
Mettā: A Pali word meaning goodwill, loving-kindness, friendliness, amity, and active interest in others. It is one of the ten perfections of the Theravāda school of Buddhism. ↩