On reading Dharma, Color and Culture, Charles Johnson's essay on Reading the Eightfold Path:
Really enjoyed this comprehensive essay. Have come back to the discussion of right speech several times since reading it. Johnson quotes Heidegger on idle speech serving to close-off "Being-in-the-world" aka "inter-being". Then notes: "Violence is not only physical, it is psychological and verbal. It beings in the mind. All my life I've wondered what it would be like to live in a society where, instead of men and women insulting and tearing each other down, people in their social relations, and even in the smallest ways, held the highest intellectual, moral, creative, and spiritual expectations for one another."
Indeed, what would that world look like? What we I look like/be if genuinely habituated to that type of expectation.
It would be a reason to follow the Buddhist idea of "holding" thought at three gates, i.e., enough time to consider: Is what I am about to say true? Will it cause no harm? And is it necessary?
I remember meeting at least one teacher who seemed to so consciously aim to observe / hold his speech in this way. Maybe it is possible.
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