I have a couple more things to say on the subject of speech and racism, and I’ll start with responsibility for our speech. This is a theme that I’ve covered before and I feel that the time is right to revisit it and write a little more.
We all are very much for freedom of speech and my previous post goes deeper into my thinking on that subject. But it seems that there is a tendency to have our say come hell or high water, and then shrug when the hurt is done, and simply point to freedom of speech. I’ve known people both professionally and personally who are very forthright and simply have their say, get things off their chest and be damned, I personally know of instances of this sort of thing causing harm.
This brings me nearer to my point here, right speech. The Buddha give us this precept to refrain from unskilled (or false) speech, and while is sounds on the surface like “thou shalt not lie”, it goes much deeper than that. One aspect of right speech is that we should be gentle, tactful. By all means be forceful or sharp if the situation warrants it, but we need to consider the wider impact of our words. The act of simply saying what you think and be damned can often cause hurt and pain to others, and to simply throw this out heedlessly of the consequences is not skilful. If we are delivering such views, is not better to measure and moderate our speech to still say what must be said but be mindful and avoid causing unneeded harm?
This draws us into the realm of Karma, that as we all know, speech can cause very real harm. That harm need not be immediate, sharp phrases and barbed comments can ring in our ears for a long time after the words have faded. The effects of these words can be felt for days, or even weeks, or can cause problems for even longer.
So, to bring things home. Well I think we should have our say, our free speech to bottle things up has it’s own Karma, I mentioned this in my previous post. But we must recognise that this freedom to sow the wind comes with the freedom to reap the whirlwind, we should exercise mindfulness and go gently with our words wherever we can.
