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The Second Annual P’arang’s Birthday Celebration
Right Speech Dharma Talk
October 26, 2003
The Still Point Code of Ethics: We undertake the precept of refraining from false speech. We agree to make every effort to speak that which is true and useful and refrain from gossip. We agree to hold in confidence what is explicitly told to us in confidence. We agree to cultivate conscious and clear communication, and to cultivate the quality of lovingkindness and honesty as the basis of our speech.
Every year, as a birthday present to myself, I do a sort of a life assessment. And every year I zoom in on speech. Where am I still in need of perfecting? Fortunately – I guess - there is always work to be done. This year, the work revolves around lying. Maybe this is because I’m currently reading Al Franken’s book on lying in the Bush administration. All I know is that lying harms. So, for the next year of my life I vow to work on four aspects of truth telling:
1. I vow to stick to the barcode. The way I come up with dharma talks each week is this: first, I review the week’s reading in The Dhammapada. Then I read the chapter we are on in The Flower Ornament Sutra. Then I usually go for a walk to let the readings merge into a theme. The great surprise, each week, is that there are always stories from my own life that can illustrate the teachings from the two sutras. This is not necessarily good news, but it saves a lot of time since I don’t have to look for examples from anywhere else.
Often the stories are experiences I’ve totally forgotten about until they surface. If I stay with the story, it comes into focus, with all the (usually) gory details, sort of like the way the barcode scanner in the grocery store only beeps when it can focus on the details of the barcode on the chocolate. Sometimes, though, I rush and even though the beep of the scanner hasn’t happened I throw the story into a dharma talk.
Sunim, my teacher, once asked me about this. I had been instructed to do a spontaneous dharma talk and I merged two stories in it, giving half of the details from one and half from the other. The point I wanted to make still worked with the merging. Sunim caught me as I was leaving the dharma hall. "P’arang, was that true?" I told him what I had done. He nodded and said, "That is putting meat on the bones of a story. It is ok."
But you know what? It isn’t ok. It isn’t ok, because it lets dishonesty seep into a dharma talk. These days I try really hard to stick to details but suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t get to the beep of the barcode. It was a story about one of my sisters losing her bike. The story probably happened close to the way I told it, but even as I write, I can’t get a focus. From now on, I vow to stick to the bar code. If this means shorter dharma talks and less idle chit chat, it is ok to have more time for tea.
2. I vow to forgo nice in the interest of kindness. I was raised to be nice. It was a mantra. "Just be nice. Be nice. That wasn’t nice; I told you to be nice." I’m guessing most people are raised this way. But there is a dishonesty in niceness that can be harmful. Better to be kind. Here’s an example of what I mean. A wonderful young woman spent a month with us recently. She was like the Cat in the Hat. All energy and project filled. We struggle for calmness and quiet on our good days; with her presence I didn’t even try. Her energy was that strong, and that seductive. For her entire last week at the abbey she kept telling me how much she would miss me. I knew what she wanted back was "I’ll miss you too." At the same time I knew that she was looking for reasons to stay in Detroit when a world of obligations was waiting for her at home.
The nice response would have been, "I’ll miss you too." But it wasn’t honest. I didn’t know if I would miss her. At the moment I only knew that she was pretty tiring for me. This has nothing to do with my admiration of her, and my delight in her energy. So, every single time, I waited for something to surface that was kind. It would have been much easier to just be nice. But easier is not what this practice is about. One act of kindness was to respond to her by thanking her for her huge heart. It is huge. We should all be so lucky. Once it was thanking her for sticking out the full month, because living in an abbey where there is practice three times a day, and a pretty constant parade of people in crisis is not easy. The kindness worked. We parted great friends. I vow to remember this when I am tempted to take the easier route of "nice".
3. I vow to be true to my personal need for food, rest, safety, shelter. One of Still Point’s dharma students, Bodhidharma, is having a tough time with diabetes. It is a terrible disease to start with, because it eats away at organs, appendages, eyes….. He has spent quite a bit of time in Detroit’s Veterans Hospital in recent months. It is very difficult for him, because once he goes in, he never knows when he’ll get out. Plus they put him on these tiny people diets, so he has to face gnawing hunger on top of everything else.
In spite of all of the difficulties, Bodhidharma has been a real warrior. He’s faced everything with grace and dignity and good humor. Part of how he does that is by leaning on his dharma family. We visit pretty much every day. He calls us. I speak to him almost daily. Last Sunday night, though, I was tired. We had spoken that afternoon, and he called me at 9:15 at night, past my Sunday night bedtime. After a few minutes I finally said to him, "Bodhidharma, I’m tired. I need to rest." I could feel the hurt in his ok. For a moment I wished that there were two of me. Then I remembered a saying a friend of mine in L.A. lives by. He was, until recently, the abbot of a Zen Center there: "I’m no good to you dead."
I’m no good to you dead. Those of us who are caretakers –and on this path this is all of us – need to be honest about our needs. We need sleep. We need decent food. We need breaks. Period. To pretend we don’t is a lie, pure and simple. So I vow to be more honest with myself about my need for rest, for decent food, for quiet times.
4. I vow to be specific. Years ago, a man from Great Britain, a client, became one of my best friends….for awhile. What broke us up was his inability to respond to a question with a specific response. Ever. I would call him late in an afternoon. "Want to go to dinner?" His response: "It doesn’t matter." "How about a movie?" "You pick." I could never get a specific response from him. We want, need, specific information from each other. So we don’t waste time guessing. Or misinterpreting. Toinette Lippe, a renowned editor, offers this advice on being specific: "Better to be clear in the beginning and get on to the next thing." Someone asked her to see Gladiator when it won an Oscar. Her response: "No thank you. Go with someone else. I saw Quo Vadis when I was a teenager and that’s enough Roman stuff for me." I vow to be more like her.
I welcome company.
