This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I was looking for my watch in my sleeve, but it's customary. I keep a lot of things in my sleeve, so it's a little hard to find. It's very nice to see all of you tonight. My name is Tova Green. I live in the building and I work in the building as well. I just wonder, is there anyone here for the first time tonight? Welcome. I just returned yesterday from four days at Tassajara, where I attended a retreat called Words Under the Words.

[01:02]

And that's the title of a poem by Naomi Shihabnai. It was a poetry and Zen retreat. And I thought that just thinking about words for several days, creating words, listening to words, words of some well-known poets and words of other people in the retreat, made me much more aware of my own words. And tonight I'm going to be talking about our words. I'm teaching a class on wise speech. And I'm particularly tonight going to focus on one aspect of wise speech, which is about speaking the truth and what gets in the way of our speaking the truth, our truth. I don't actually think there is anything that is the truth, but how do we find our own truths, and how do we give voice to our truths, and what is the place in that of lies, secrets, and silence?

[02:12]

Just to say that phrase is a phrase that is the title of a book by Adrienne Rich, a poet who died two months ago, who actually ended her life in Santa Cruz. She was originally from the East Coast, and she's one of the poets who's had a big influence on my thinking, and so I wanted to bring her into the room tonight. I also wanted to say that at this retreat at Tassajara, one of the facilitators, one of the leaders of the retreat, worked with us on how to embody poetry, our own and others, poetry and how to give voice to the poems as we share them. And so I came back with a resolve to fully, more fully occupy my voice. And so I'm going to try very hard tonight not to fade out. So maybe you could help me.

[03:15]

I think I'll be able to tell if I'm fading out, and you're probably fading out at the same time. So I'll try not to fade out tonight and to speak what I am going to say fully. I just want to situate the topic of telling the truth in the practice period that's happening now. So for those of you who are here for the first time, we're in the fourth week of a six-week session practice period where we have classes and practice period teas and we study something in some depth and the theme for the practice period is the six paramitas or perfections they're sometimes called they're ways of developing qualities in ourselves that help us wake up so the six paramitas and some of you could recite these by heart as well because we've been studying them for six weeks.

[04:17]

They're giving, or dhana. Shila, or ethical conduct. And that's where this precept about speaking the truth comes in. Patience, or krishanti. Energy, or virya. These other words are Sanskrit words. Meditation, or dhyana. and wisdom, or prajna. So the second of the paramitas, shila, or ethical conduct, is embodied in our teachings, the Buddhist teachings, and teachings that we follow to this day about being upright. That's also a borrowed phrase from a book about the precepts by Tension Reb Anderson, which I... find very helpful in studying the precepts. And of the ten precepts, they're called clear mind precepts, three of them are about speech.

[05:21]

Because it's very easy to go astray with our speech. If we want to, I think the basis of all the precepts is on connecting fully with ourselves and one another. And it's both, speech is both a way of in which we can connect with each other, but it can also be divisive or if we're not speaking truthfully, our speech just may, rather than connect us, cause misunderstanding or division between us and the people we're trying to reach. So I think the precepts on speech, they're all interconnected, all ten precepts, and I may illustrate that as I speak tonight.

[06:25]

So I thought I would share some of the Buddha's words on right speech. He taught about right speech and all of the other precepts as well. And then I'll also refer to some of the words of Ehe Dogen, one of our Zen ancestors who lived about 800 years ago. And I'll refer to some of the teachings of Tenshin Rev. Anderson and another contemporary teacher, Diane Rossetto, who wrote a book about the precepts as well that I find very helpful. And I'll try to draw on my own experience. And I've included one poem tonight. So to go to the words of the Buddha, there's one sutta or the Buddha's words were spoken

[07:40]

And many of his talks start with, thus have I heard, because they were passed on orally, and only sometime after his death were they written down. So in a sutta called Kunda the Silversmith, the Buddha spoke of skillful and unskillful verbal action. So unskillful verbal action. Verbal action includes what he called false speech or lying, divisive speech, harsh or abusive speech, and idle chatter. And skillful speech is the opposite. So we ask, is it true? Does speech create connection or concord rather than contributing to division? Is it kind? And is it timely and factual?

[08:41]

And by kind, the sutta says, he or she speaks words that are soothing to the ear, that are affectionate, that go to the heart. And here I think it's important to think about not only how we speak to others, but also how we speak to ourselves. Can we practice... bright speech, kind speech, and telling the truth to ourselves as well as to others. I think that's where it has to start. I just want to say a little bit more about kind speech. I think Zazen practice is one way of developing kind speech with ourselves. because it gives us time to slow down and actually listen to how we're speaking to ourselves. What is the tone of voice that we're using to ourselves?

[09:44]

And how can we develop a patience and an appreciation of how hard we're trying? I noticed that as I was getting ready to come downstairs, I noticed a book outside our senior Dharma teacher Blanche's room. And the title of it was, Regardless of what you were taught to believe, there's nothing wrong with you. It's by Sherry Huber. And, oh, that just seems so appropriate because we often feel there's something wrong with us and we can be our own worst critics. And that happens through our speech. So... I wanted to share something about a kind speech that Dogen, this ancestor who lived 800 years ago, wrote about. It's something he wrote called The Bodhisattva's Four Methods of Guidance.

[10:47]

One of those four methods is kind speech. And in it, he shares the phrase, please treasure yourself. It is kind speech. to speak to sentient beings as you would to a baby, he says. And I think he means not baby talk, but that way that when we hold a baby or look at a baby, we just want to speak in a soft voice and maybe appreciate the preciousness of that new life. And can we speak to ourselves that way? Can we speak to others that way? He says, those who hear kind speech from you, have a delighted expression and a joyful mind. Those who hear of your kind speech will be deeply touched. They will never forget it. You should ponder that fact that kind speech is not just praising the merit of others.

[11:48]

It has the power to turn the destiny of the nation. So in thinking about wise speech, I think, Laura... speaking our truths. How can we do it? Can we do it in a way that's kind? Can we do that with ourselves and with others, kind and respectful of each being that we're speaking to? So in thinking about speaking In thinking about speaking the truth, it's not easy to speak the truth. And partly we may lie to ourselves or to others because we don't know our own truths. And sometimes our truths may be buried deeply due to many years of conditioning or social taboos or not yet.

[12:54]

having the time and the space to uncover what we think or feel. And we may not have the vocabulary. There's... a way of developing our own vocabulary of... where we can identify what we're feeling from moment to moment and also what we need or what our heart's desire is from moment to moment. There's a practice of nonviolent communication, which I've found very helpful in beginning to identify needs and feelings. And in the class I'm teaching, I've used a deck of, there are two decks of cards. One is a deck of cards that has needs and the other one has feelings.

[13:56]

And to look through them and pick the cards that seem to speak to what you're experiencing at that moment can really help develop our ability to be more in tune or in touch with what it is that is going on for us. moment to moment and enable us to speak our truths. And I think that it's not only important to be able to tune into what is true for us in a given situation, but then if we're going to share it, to be able to do that in a skillful way, in a way that will, again, connect us to to another person rather than perpetuate a bad feeling or a division. Even if what we have to say or want to say is something that we may be unhappy with someone else about or realize there's something that is really bothering us about something someone did or said, we just need to...

[15:16]

need to talk about it with them and find out what was going on from their perspective and have a conversation about it. I'm dealing with a situation like that now that I just realized that I've been holding on to, I could say a grudge. There's something someone did a year ago that... really troubled me and I have not been able to talk with him about it. And so I've been thinking about what would be a good time and how can I bring this up and what would be a skillful way to say what's going on for me and then to find out what his perception is of what happened because I only know my side of it. I don't really know what was happening for him at that time. And so I'm a little embarrassed to say that it's taken me almost a year to do this. But I also think that I think it's taken me this long to realize how hard it's been to let go of it.

[16:25]

So it's never too late to have that kind of conversation. And I think part of speaking the truth is also being willing to listen to someone else's truth. And to have a conversation that can be a learning conversation, where you can go into the conversation knowing what you want to say, but also knowing that your view is somewhat limited. So there's a story about this in Diane Rosetto's book. She has a section in in this chapter on speaking truthfully called The Certainty Principle. And it's a story about Mara. Mara appears often in the Buddha's suttas and has encounters with the Buddha.

[17:29]

Mara sometimes embodies deception or trickery, but actually was a very good friend to the Buddha because Mara caused the Buddha to think deeply about things. This story is, one day Mara was traveling along the road with some of his attendants, and he noticed a man doing walking meditation. The man's face glowed with delight. It seems he had just discovered something on the ground in front of him. And noticing the glow lighting the man's face, one of Mara's attendants asked Mara, what the man had discovered. And Mara answered, It seems he has discovered a piece of the truth. And his attendant got quite excited and said to Mara, But you are the god of deception. Aren't you bothered by the fact that someone has found a piece of the truth? And Mara answered, I'm not troubled in the least.

[18:31]

Why not? asked his attendant. Because, Mara replied, No sooner do people discover a little truth than they make a belief out of it. And I think he's talking about the tendency that we have when we think something is true to solidify that truth into a belief so that that's the way we see that's how things are. And it's very hard to have some spaciousness around our our beliefs and to realize that we see things the way they do due to our conditioning and our experiences, what we've been taught, what we've read. And that can have to do with beliefs about who we are, who someone else is, all the way to political beliefs.

[19:38]

And some of the things that we take in and then believe to be true can really get in our way when we're having a conversation with someone else unless we can hold some of our beliefs more lightly. I want to, this is... where I'd like to share a poem with you written by an Israeli poet named Yehuda Amichai, and it's called The Place Where We Are Right. The place where we are right, from the place where we are right, flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard, but doubts and loves, Dig up the world like a mole, a plow, and a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood.

[20:47]

I'll read it again. The place where we are right. From the place where we are right, flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow, and a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood. So I think that sense of the possibility when we can let go of what we strongly hold is right, that the ground will be soft and flowers can... come through in the spring. And having doubts is sometimes beneficial to be aware that we, and here's a phrase from Dogen, we see and understand only what our eye of practice can reach, only what we are trying

[21:59]

capable of seeing at any given time. There's a passage in a beautiful poem that Dogen wrote called the Genjo Koan that I'd love to share. It starts out with the image of sailing out on a boat. When you sail out in a boat to the midst of the ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, you might assume that the ocean is circular. But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.

[23:05]

In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety. Whole worlds are there. So Dogen also says, in another place, talks about what does the ocean look like to a fish? It's very different from what it looks like to us. We can't really know what it looks like to a fish. We only know how we see the ocean. And so we really only know our own perceptions and our own truths. But they're only truths, well, I don't mean to say that all truth is relative, but we really only see the world through our own eyes.

[24:12]

And so it's very, that's where I think it's really helpful to be able to listen and to be able to understand and see what another person's view of the world is. And when our views of the world are different, to try to hold our own view spaciously and leave room for the other views that are there. So I'm just going to check the time. like to leave a little time for questions. I'd like to talk about the other part of Adrienne Rich's phrase, lies, secrets, and silence. So, you know, I think most of us, we may not lie intentionally, but sometimes we lie by leaving things out, and we may also...

[25:22]

carry some secrets that are not exactly lies, but we're not able to or willing to share them at a given time. And sometimes we're silent because we either may not know what to say or we may think that what we have to say could be misunderstood. We may feel we need more time to think about what words would be appropriate in a given situation. And sometimes, especially if we want to talk with someone we're in conflict with, we may be silent for a while to sort out how we really feel before we speak. So silence is not necessarily, I mean, silence can be very beneficial, but it can also sometimes be a way of protecting us.

[26:30]

And Reb says, Tension Anderson says in his book on lying, that silence, if we choose to be silent when we hear someone speaking about silence, in a way that's not respectful of someone else or actually could be hurting someone else and we don't speak out. We're contributing to a situation in which it's it becomes harder to speak the truth. I'm not saying this exactly the way I want to. It can be an act of courage to speak out in a situation where you see someone else or hear someone else saying something that you feel is harmful.

[27:46]

learning how to speak out in a situation like that in a way that you can be heard isn't easy. But I think it's really beneficial to try to speak your truth in a situation like that. And often when we hear things either about ourselves or about a group that we're part of, that are negative, we can internalize those things and hold beliefs about ourselves that may be very hard to shake. I think of a friend who was from a Polish background and she wanted to go to social work school, but she was convinced that she would not be accepted because she was too stupid. And even though

[28:47]

She did her application and she was accepted to school. She had a tremendous amount of difficulty in social work school because every time she had a test, she was extremely frightened because of this belief that when she came from a stereotype of polls in our society as being stupid, it wasn't true. about her and yet it was so hard for her to not believe it about herself and I think there are other things that we can internalize that are really very damaging and it takes a lot of work to uncover them and to really way to let go of those beliefs about ourselves. And those can come from parents or teachers, the teacher who says, oh, you can't sing, and all your life you go on thinking, you're being ashamed to sing, or you sing out of tune.

[29:59]

Messages like that can really be very harmful, or a parent who compares one child to another, you're the smart one, you're the pretty one. and we internalize those messages. So telling our truths and sometimes what's really helpful to actually recognize our truths is to find people who can challenge some of those beliefs. and help us challenge some of those negative beliefs we might have about ourselves. So truth-telling is not simple, and yet it can be life-giving. And I'd just like to end with some words from the poet Adrienne Rich. The possibilities that exist between two people or among a group of people are a kind of alchemy.

[31:07]

They are the most interesting things in life. It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything or tell you everything at once, or that I can know beforehand everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you that these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me, that I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words, that we both know we are trying all the time to extend the possibilities of truth between us, the possibility of life between us. So, let's see. I think there's a little time for questions, so I'm wondering if there are any questions. Thank you for reminding your voice.

[32:12]

It's an election year. I'm wondering if you found some advice for participating in a process that seems to check very hardened fields of speech for no followers. Politics is one of the most difficult areas, I think, to hold your truth lightly or to hold your opinion and to not have it... Well, yes, I mean, I think it's so hard to hear views that are so polarized. and to know how to make a difference in that dialogue or lack of dialogue actually, lack of listening. And I think we tend to listen to the radio programs and read the newspapers and magazines that kind of affirm our own position so that it's sometimes even hard to know how to talk with somebody whose views are different from yours.

[33:33]

I don't have any advice except to try to stay open. And I wish I could say that to all of the politicians who are so vested in their own point of view. I would love to hear you say more about why speech in the context of speaking the truth that has the potential to be hurtful to another. One person's truth is impossible. I would like to ask me to talk about why speech when what you want to say has the potential of hurting someone else.

[34:33]

So I think that's where it helps to think about the timeliness of it. Some of the Buddha's criteria for when to speak your truth to someone else where it may be hurtful, and actually you don't really know if it's going to be hurtful, but is what you're saying true from your perspective? Can you speak it in a kind way rather than harshly? And is it timely? Can you find the right time and maybe the right place to talk about this? And I think if you can do it in a way where you can express how you're feeling and not just how you're feeling, but your perception of what happened and to be really curious about what the other person's experience of that is.

[35:46]

So it can be a shared inquiry rather than you're coming into it saying, I have something I really have to tell you about what you did and how it bugged me. It's like that is not going to create connection. But I'm sure you can find a way to do it that would come out of your caring about your relationship with the other person. And if it comes from that place, you're likely to be able to do it in a way that there can be some dialogue and hopefully an opening rather than closing. And sometimes painful things, you know, are maybe not as unexpected to the other person. They may be able to really hear them because they may ring true for that person.

[36:53]

Someone in my class gave me a cartoon. Actually, I brought it. by Roz Chast, and it's, I think I brought it? Maybe I didn't bring it. Anyway, it's about telling children about death. And, you know, death is a very hard thing to talk about with anybody, but this showed many ways in which parents were just avoiding the subject of death with their children. And in a cartoon form, you can laugh about it, but it, um, It's really not so funny, but there was one example of what happened to the cat that died. So the child asks, where's the cat? And the parent quickly brought another cat that didn't look like the cat that died, but the child said, well, this doesn't look like my cat. Oh, she just got wet.

[37:54]

I mean, these cartoons were... They were so kind of outrageous that you could laugh about them. But I think when children ask about death, it's because they are curious, they want to know, and it's okay to tell them to the extent that they're asking. And I think when we talk about things that are difficult to say, if we feel that we have... well, that it could be beneficial to our relationship with that person to say them, they may not be as painful as we think. I hope, yeah. So anyway, that was a little bit of a detour, but anyway. So I'm hearing a lot, in the talk I'm hearing about how

[38:59]

ideas about how to practice, write speech, wise speech, kind of, you know, when I can kind of think about what I want to say. And so I guess I'm curious about when we're being spoken to in an abusive way, It's time to respond and there's not much time to step back and collect points or touch in with how I'm feeling or what's coming up around it. It's just kind of like that voice of feeling maybe threatened or something. So I'm wondering about right speech in that context. kind of feeling threatened or hurt maybe?

[40:01]

One thing you can, you can always do it, but if you can do it, you might say, I just need a minute before I say something. Or to choose to not continue to be in conversation with that person at that time. Or you can also say something like this, I'm finding this very hurtful and I don't want... I'm finding this hurtful if someone is actually being verbally abusive. But, you know, I think sometimes just leaving that situation is the best way of dealing with it at the time and then maybe coming back to it later when you have had a chance to think about how you really feel and what kind of response you'd want to make. I think if somebody's yelling at you or being abusive towards you, yelling back is not necessarily the best thing to do because you may regret later what you've said and it doesn't necessarily connect.

[41:15]

But I think it's also important to take care of yourself in a situation like that. Thank you. So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:55]

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