Greetings,
More on right speech:
--- The Basics of Right Speech
As recorded in the Pali Canon, the historical Buddha taught that Right Speech
had four parts:
• Abstain from false speech; do not tell lies or deceive.
• Do not slander others or speak in a way that causes disharmony or
enmity.
• Abstain from rude, impolite or abusive language.
• Do not indulge in idle talk or gossip.
Practice of these four aspects of Right Speech goes beyond simple "thou shalt
nots." It means speaking truthfully and honestly; speaking in a way to promote
harmony and good will; using language to reduce anger and ease tensions; using
language in a way that is useful.
If your speech is not useful and beneficial, teachers say, it is better to keep
silent.
--- Right Listening
In his book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich
Nhat Hanh said, "Deep listening is the foundation of Right Speech. If we cannot
listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech. No matter what we say, it
will not be mindful, because we'll be speaking only our own ideas and not in
response to the other person."
This reminds us that our speech is not just our speech. Communication is
something that happens between people. We might think of speech as something we
give to others, and if we think of it that way, what is the quality of that
gift?
Mindfulness includes mindfulness of what's going on inside ourselves. If we
aren't paying attention to our own emotions and taking care of ourselves,
tension and suffering build up. And then we explode.
http://buddhism.about.com/od/theeightfoldpath/a/rightspeech.htm
---
On Nov 13, 2013, at 4:44 AM, MarshaV wrote:
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. ..."
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