This is concerned with Morality, isn't it? And it's totally not black and white, it depends on who those other two people were. A lot of average people think there is no problem in swearing at all, no matter whom you swore to. We have seen western Dhamma teachers in front of hundreds of people swear. We did not think it was wise. We have even heard of an ordained Western monk, while teaching Dhamma in Bangkok, not only in front of many people, but in front of many Thais was swearing. A lot of people in our society tend to think swearing is no big deal. We don't think it is right.
As to the second person who laughed. People laugh at almost everything and that is a sad part of our society, too. I was getting on a Thai bus once at Surat Thani and I was helping a person get on a bus, we were taking this person to the doctor. The bus had a TV in front that was weld up in a metal frame that was not protected. As I was helping this person get on the bus, I didn't see the metal frame. I gashed my head into on it. The entire bus, full of people, started laughing.
Things like that people laugh at when they watch TV and they know it is a slapstick, they know it is a comedy, they know it is no big deal. But in real life, when I took my hand away, it was full of blood and I said, "Is that funny?" Everybody on the bus shut up. People laugh at things that aren't funny, people laugh at sad things, people don't always have an intelligent mind that knows when to laugh and when not to laugh. So as to the person who laughed, that is kind of average, a lot of people do that, there is not much you can do if they are at that level.
As for the person that swore at their mother, sometimes there is nothing that we can say to them either. Imagine, I am at a conference with 300 Western meditation teachers and a teacher started swearing while they are giving their talk. Many people laugh at it and think it is cool. I am the odd one, Rosemary and I are the odd one's out. Should we stand up and say, "Hey, this is ridiculous"? People would have laughed at us and said we are out of touch, we live in Thailand and don't know what America is about.
Sometimes we can't do anything. Our silence was noted by many people, just like this person said, that when they were silent, they felt the person swearing could see that they did not appreciate, did not agree with what they were doing. Our silence was somewhat appreciated by some at the conference. My walking out of the conference was appreciated, also. While not saying anything I walked out and made the statement in silence. Sometimes we can make a statement in silence, sometimes we can't.
Sometimes we have to be careful whom we raise our objections with. What if the person who is making the joke, laughing about swearing at their mother, etc., what if they are prone to anger? What if you say something like, "I don't think you should swear to you mother". Then they may want to take it out then on you. Like I said before, it is not always black and white, it depends on the situation and who is involved as to whether you speak up or not. But there is no doubt about it, someone who swears at their mother and thinks it is quite okay, that is the type of person that we would rather not be around. And somebody who laughs at this stuff would also be a type of person we would rather not be around. We may not be able to make a decision in that moment not to be around these types of people, but as to future encounters, we can make the decision to be around these people or not.
Now, I mentioned a little bit yesterday about working on the road gang and that most of the guys swore a lot and not a single one of them finished high school. Some of them didn't even make it to high school, they could drop out at age 12 or whatever. So their language was very coarse. That is to be expected of people that level, but as I did mention in a group they all swore, but when I was one on one with them, just the two of us, they didn't swear. They were a totally different person because they did not have to be something to match the crowd. They could just be more relaxed because I wasn't expecting them to be like the crowd. So it depends on the situation, the type of people involved, how you can actually react, how you can not react and so on. But granted, within this tradition and the Morality we teach, we don't think swearing at your mother is a very intelligent thing to do, and we don't think laughing would be very proper either.