If you read something and it’s starting to rile you up, stop reading. If you watch something and it feels like the person speaking is trying to rile you up, stop listening. Turn it off.
That person has an agenda. It may be unseen to you, but it is clear cut to them. And that agenda is of no benefit to you. They are using your emotions and fears against you to make a name for themselves. To make a buck. For fame. For following. For clicks. For power.
Everything they say and everything they write goes against what Buddhist practitioners call “Right Speech.” You don’t have to be Buddhist to get behind the concept of Right Speech. Here’s the layman’s version of it: Right Speech means using your words in a positive, truthful, and kind way.
The Four Principles of Right Speech:
Avoid Lying
Always tell the truth. Lying harms yourself and others. It damages relationships. Relationships are built on trust and understanding. By lying, the foundation of your relationship is unstable and will deteriorate over time.
Avoid Harmful Speech
Don’t say things that might hurt others, even if they have said hurtful things to you or wrong things about you. Do not opt for vengeance through words, ever. Don’t use harsh or abusive language directed individually or toward a collective group of people. Do not use words meant to divide and create opposing factions. Don’t spread rumors. Don’t say things out of anger or spite.
Avoid Gossip
Don’t talk about others behind their backs, at all. Don’t create unnecessary drama through your words. When you gossip, you create conflict. You create wrong perceptions. Wrong perception is at the root of human suffering.
If you don’t know something to be true, don’t say it. Even if you know something to be true, gossiping about someone is not helpful. Gossip is always harmful. If you must say something about someone, say it to that person and do it in a helpful way. Leave your judgment at the front door.
Avoid Idle Chatter
When you speak, speak mindfully. Speak with awareness. Avoid frivolous conversation that contains no value or purpose. Say things that are helpful, constructive, or kind. Use words that build people up, not tear people down.
By practicing Right Speech, you engage in a form of unity. You are led to and from other paths on The Noble Eightfold Path:
- Right View
- Right Thinking
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfulness
- Right Concentration
By listening, watching, or engaging with those who choose not to practice Right Speech, you engage in self-harm. You engage in harm to others, harm to your community, and harm to the world at large.
Catch yourself before you or another tries to lead you astray. That is not a path of love.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
There’s a reason King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in his own right, nominated the zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the same honor during his lifetime.
“Our enemies are not man,” Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in a 1966 letter to King. “[Our enemies] are intolerance, fanaticism, dictatorship, cupidity, hatred and discrimination […] These are the real enemies of man [and they] are present everywhere, in our very hearts and minds.”
Begin by practicing Right Speech and by avoiding the words and language of those who do not. The time is now for civility. Now is the only time we ever have.
Begin with the words you share into the world and the words you ingest from within the world each day.