Right Speech in a general sense is speech that is truthful and not harming. Now that's in a general sense, but as my example goes with the kids in the house that's burning, when the old person says, "Come out, I have some cakes and candies", sometimes we can actually lie, and it's not wrong speech because of the intention behind it. Yet that's rare, that doesn't happen very often when we have to lie in order to help somebody. So in general, Right Speech is truthful and non harming.
Now, that's interesting when I say non-harming. Because sometimes we say the truth, and it harms. Yeah, there's a tricky place here. Harming. Maybe it's only short-term harm which produces long-term benefit. So this also comes in. It's helpful to mention one of the Suttas, again in those 20 Suttas (if you haven't gotten them you can email us), it's called the Prince Abhaya Sutta. As the Sutta goes, the Prince went to the Buddha to try to trick him, which of course was impossible to do. He thought the Buddha would have to answer a black or white question with either black or white, two alternatives. So he put forth the question to the Buddha, and the Buddha simply said, there's no black or white answer to that. So the guy was floored, he was wiped out.
Then Prince Abhaya wanted to know, would the Buddha ever say something that was incorrect, unpleasing to others and unbeneficial, or does he only say something that's correct, pleasing to others and beneficial? The Buddha said that if something is not correct, and not pleasant for people to hear, and it's not beneficial, he would never say it. If something is not correct and it's not beneficial, but it is pleasing to others, he will not say it. If something is correct, it's not pleasing to others, and it's not beneficial, then even though it's correct, if it's not beneficial he won't say it. Perhaps, you get the gist. If it is correct, and pleasing to others, but not beneficial, he won't say it. If it's correct and not pleasing to others, but it is beneficial, he knows the right time to say it. And if it's correct and pleasing to others, and beneficial, he also knows the right time to say it. (Read the Sutta later to see his words more exactly.)
The point is, it has to be beneficial, it has to be appropriate and beneficial. It doesn't matter if it's pleasant to the person's ears or not, it's whether it's appropriate and beneficial. And knowing the right time to say it. This is important. A lot of people think that if it's true, you can say it. No! How many of you have gotten yourself into trouble saying something that's true. If there's any of you who haven't done it, I'll be surprised. So when we think of Right Speech, it's not only we try to make sure it's true, we try to make sure it's appropriate, we also try to make sure we say it at the right time.
Now, how is it supported by body awareness? It's supported a lot by body awareness. One reason body awareness helps our speech is that it slows down our speech. They have a disease from cattle called "hoof and mouth" disease. We heard a joke that humans have "foot in mouth" disease. So, by slowing down our speech, we can actually be more mindful of our speech and then make fewer mistakes.
In particular, one of the things I use and recommend to our assistants whenever they're going back to the West, is to be aware of your hands when your talking with others. If you can keep them still, or, just touch the fingers together lightly like walking meditation when you're in a conversation, this will help you greatly to be more mindful. And most people never see what we're doing, because it's just done in our lap and they're looking at our face. It can give us more time to think more clearly and balance and let go of the unbeneficial emotions that often come.
Another example, one time I was watching Rosemary and another person having a discussion from a distance. They were both standing. The discussion was a little bit unpleasant. From the distance, I didn't hear a word of it, but I could see Rosemary stood still. The other person kept fidgeting, kept moving their feet, moving their hands, was obviously very nervous. Rosemary stood still. This is very dramatic.
If you can be more aware of your body, you can then more aware of your speech and then your thoughts as well.
Now, the question about Right Speech and humor? It's a difficult one. Last night there was a lot of humor in the talk. Rosemary and I try very hard not to make our humor anything that hurts people, but we can't always change the way that people react to what we say. There's been many times that Rosemary and I would say something in the hall, and we did not actually mean for it to be funny, but people laughed. Now where does some of this come from?
An example, I'm getting on a bus in Thailand, I'm actually helping someone to the hospital, so it was awkward getting the person up the steps to the bus. The bus had a TV next to the driver and there was a bit of metal around the TV holding it up, and it was open. Trying to help the other person, I was not looking and I went straight into the metal with my head. The bus was filled with 40 or 50 people. Laughter, heaps of laughter. I then said, "Is this funny?" and showed them my hand, which was all bloody after touching my head. They stopped laughing.
This is part of the unfortunate conditioning that people are getting today, not just in the West but it's everywhere. TVs and the media are making people desensitized to pain, they'll laugh when things aren't really funny, laugh at pain. So it is important to understand that even when you say something that isn't meant to be funny sometimes people will laugh. Rosemary and I have to be careful about not wanting to feed that sort of thing. So we try as much as possible to make sure that our humor is presented in a way that is very clear, it's not hurting anyone, and it's very clear that it's got a Dhamma essence to it.
The little kid in my Monopoly game story, there's no such kid, right? There really isn't a kid who's going to take their thing off the table and not stay in jail or whatever. Though, some kids will cheat, won't they? And we don't want to play with them either so the story is still the same. So with the humor that we give, we really try never to make it hurtful. That's important in using Right Speech.