I was pondering Right Speech the other day, I had expressed an opinion to a friend and was a little less than diplomatic in getting my point across. I make no apologies for this, I was blunt because I was concerned.
When we think of Right Speech, we think of sweet words and gentle diplomacy. This is one way of seeing Right Speech and it’s a good one, I wish this was the only kind of speech I ever had to hear or use. The best managers are like this, you don’t even realise you’ve been told off. Occasionally though, it’s better to blunt,you need to just say it.
Right Speech is, in my view, more about the underlying intention. What motivation underlies your speech itself? This is more important than the words themselves, softly spoken words with an unwholesome intent are far more harmful than bluntness, even swearing, but done with wholesome intent. I’ve said this before, we need to try and look beyond the actual style of the delivery to the substance of the message.
But I’m being one pointed, Right Speech could easily have been called Right Communication as fully half of it is listening, how can you respond to a person in Right Speech if you don’t hear with they’re saying? I think here we have to honestly recognise that a lot of the time we hear what we want to hear, not what is really being said.
Think about my example above of the swearing, imagine outspoken comedians; these folks can have a message, Bill Hicks certainly did, but it’s easier to dismiss them because of the language used. This failure to hear, does not, in my view, constitute Right Speech.
I think the bit of right speech I identify with is “if you can’t improve on silence, say nothing” or as I have heard the Greeks say “he who knows best says nothing”, I think often we talk too much and have too much to say about nothing, it’s the reason I keep my blog posts short and if I find I have more to say I just make follow on posts.
My last thought for now on Right Speech then, is to shamelessly pinch a quote from the Gnostics, they were talking about the name of their true god, but it fits my purposes quite nicely as well: “You will hear it in the silence”.
Photo by Joshua Davies.
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
I guess you could say Right doesn’t always equal Polite - but sometimes - probably most of the time in daily life - it does.
Of all the situations in which to discover the worst of speech, working as a convenience store clerk has to be one of the worst, no kidding. There’s nothing like a spit-spraying middle manager who had a crap day and thinks the minimum-wage clerk is just the person to take it out on. I usually went one of two ways: If the attack wasn’t personal, threatening, or so profanity-laced that it was offending other customers, I would as gently as possible hand over a free-cup and suggest that the ranting person could really use a cup of coffee on the house. If it was any of the above, a little more firmness was called for - occasionally, a *lot* more.
Thinking back to ethics, people can certainly argue that they aren’t situational - but I don’t see how anyone can deny that this kind of Right has to be.
“Excuse me, sir could you please put down that property that doesn’t belong to you, and surrender to the authorities now?”
or
“STOP, THIEF!”