Greetings again, RMP has spoken of peace of mind in terms "Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions ..." But what of right speech??? It's the third factor in the eight-fold path. It might be worth the time to investigate what Buddhism presents concerning this category. Here is one Buddhist's take on right speech:
Buddhism Right Speech For many of us, right speech is the most difficult of the precepts to honor. Yet practicing right speech is fundamental both to helping us become trustworthy individuals and to helping us gain mastery over the mind. So choose your words - and your motives for speaking - with care. An essay by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Right speech, explained in negative terms, means avoiding four types of harmful speech: lies (words spoken with the intent of misrepresenting the truth); divisive speech (spoken with the intent of creating rifts between people); harsh speech (spoken with the intent of hurting another person's feelings); and idle chatter (spoken with no purposeful intent at all). Notice the focus on intent: this is where the practice of right speech intersects with the training of the mind. Before you speak, you focus on why you want to speak. This helps get you in touch with all the machinations taking place in the committee of voices running your mind. If you see any unskillful motives lurking behind the committee's decisions, you veto them. As a result, you become more aware of yourself, more honest with yourself, more firm with yourself. You also save yourself from saying things that you'll later regret. In this way you strengthen qualities of mind that will be helpful in meditation, at the same time avoiding any potentially painful memories that would get in the way of being attentive to the present moment when the time comes to meditate. In positive terms, right speech means speaking in ways that are trustworthy, harmonious, comforting, and worth taking to heart. When you make a practice of these positive forms of right speech, your words become a gift to others. In response, other people will start listening more to what you say, and will be more likely to respond in kind. This gives you a sense of the power of your actions: the way you act in the present moment does shape the world of your experience. You don't need to be a victim of past events. For many of us, the most difficult part of practicing right speech lies in how we express our sense of humor. Especially here in America, we're used to getting laughs with exaggeration, sarcasm, group stereotypes, and pure silliness -- all classic examples of wrong speech. If people get used to these sorts of careless humor, they stop listening carefully to what we say. In this way, we cheapen our own discourse. Actually, there's enough irony in the state of the world that we don't need to exaggerate or be sarcastic. The greatest humorists are the ones who simply make us look directly at the way things are. Expressing our humor in ways that are truthful, useful, and wise may require thought and effort, but when we master this sort of wit we find that the effort is well spent. We've sharpened our own minds and have improved our verbal environment. In this way, even our jokes become part of our practice: an opportunity to develop positive qualities of mind and to offer something of intelligent value to the people around us. So pay close attention to what you say -- and to why you say it. When you do, you'll discover that an open mouth doesn't have to be a mistake. http://www.esolibris.com/articles/buddhism/buddhism_speech.php --- On Nov 13, 2013, at 3:42 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: Greetings, Ah yes, "peace of mind"... "Peace of mind isn't at all superficial, really,'' I expound. ``It's the whole thing. That which produces it is good maintenance; that which disturbs it is poor maintenance. What we call workability of the machine is just an objectification of this peace of mind. The ultimate test's always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself."'' (RMP,'ZAMM) "Zen Buddhists talk about ``just sitting,'' a meditative practice in which the idea of a duality of self and object does not dominate one's consciousness. What I'm talking about here in motorcyele maintenance is ``just fixing,'' in which the idea of a duality of self and object doesn't dominate one's consciousness. When one isn't dominated by feelings of separateness from what he's working on, then one can be said to ``care'' about what he's doing. That is what caring really is, a feeling of identification with what one's doing. When one has this feeling then he also sees the inverse side of caring, Quality itself. So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. That was what it was about that wall in Korea. It was a material reflection of a spiritual reality." (RMP,'ZAMM) Marsha --- On Nov 12, 2013, at 5:37 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: Greetings, Of the talk about dukkha being like a spinning wheel? From Anthony McWatt's 'MoQ Textbook' "The MOQ sees the wheel of karma as attached to a cart that is going somewhere - from quantum forces through inorganic forces and biological patterns and social patterns to the intellectual patterns that perceive the quantum forces. In the sixth century B.C. in India there was no evidence of this kind of evolutionary progress, and Buddhism, accordingly, does not pay attention to it. Today it’s not possible to be so uninformed. The suffering which the Buddhists regard as only that which is to be escaped, is seen by the MOQ as merely the negative side of the progression toward Quality (or, just as accurately, the expansion of quality). Without the suffering to propel it, the cart would not move forward at all. (Pirsig, 1997a)" The Ultimate Truth (Quality) is something each individual must realize; it is the still point at the center of the wheel. That still point is not you or me or any things. In meditation, you're moving towards that center. You are letting go of all patterns: inorganic, biological, social and intellectual. The patterns are "killed", or 'completely stopped', in order to realize the still point in the center of the wheel - the silence. The letting go is not annihilation or a rejection, but it gives one the perspective and peace of mind to understand the whole from being at the center instead out on the circumference where you just get whirled about or stuck in a gumption rut. When refreshed, one moves forward smoothly and/or creatively. Imho. Marsha --- On Nov 10, 2013, at 7:54 PM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: Yet, how does RMP state morality can be served? RMP: While sustaining biological and social patterns Kill all intellectual patterns. Kill them completely And then follow Dynamic Quality And morality will be served. ... "When Phaedrus first went to India he'd wondered why, if this passage of enlightenment into pure Dynamic Quality was such a universal reality, did it only occur in certain parts of the world and not others? At the time he'd thought this was proof that the whole thing was just Oriental religious baloney, the equivalent of a magic land called 'heaven' that Westerners go to if they are good and get a ticket from the priests. Now he saw that enlightenment is distributed in all parts of the world just as the color yellow is distributed in all parts of the world, but some cultures accept it and others screen out recognition of it." (LILA, Chapter 32) --- > On Nov 9, 2013, at 2:34 PM, david buchanan <[email protected]> wrote: > > "When Socrates Met Phaedrus: Eros in Philosophy," by Simon Critchley, Hans > Jonas professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New > York. > > > http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/when-socrates-met-phaedrus-eros-in-philosophy/?_r=0 > > > > "The intention of the “Phaedrus”.., as Alexander Nehemas has convincingly > suggested, is to inflame philosophical eros in Phaedrus that gives him the > ability to distinguish bad rhetoric, of the kinds found in Lysias’s speech > and in Socrates’s first speech, from true rhetoric, of the kind found in the > second speech and then analyzed in the second half of the dialogue." > > > "...The opposite of a self-contradiction, the “Phaedrus” is a performative > self-enactment of philosophy. If eros is a force that shapes the > philosopher, then rhetoric is the art by which the philosopher persuades the > non-philosopher to assume philosophical eros, to incline their soul towards > truth. But to do this does not entail abandoning the art of rhetoric or > indeed sophistry, which teaches that art, although it does so falsely. > Philosophy uses true rhetoric against false rhetoric. The subject matter > of the “Phaedrus” is rhetoric, true rhetoric. ..." ___ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
