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Guided Meditation: Noticing Internal Speech

Greetings everyone. Greetings friends. My name is Nikki Mirghafori, and I join this virtual space from Mountain View, California, on unceded Ohlone land. I'm delighted to be supporting the sangha sitting together this week as Gil^[1] travels. I hope you are all well.

This week, I'm looking forward to sharing teachings on one of the path factors. It is a path factor that is very important, and we engage with it every day, even if we don't get the chance to formally sit and meditate. We always engage with speech. I'll say much more about wise speech, or right speech, in the dharma talk, but that is the theme for this week. It is a very important theme. Let's just begin and meditate together.

Arriving and landing in our bodies in this moment in time. Arriving together.

Now, letting go of whatever has come before. Maybe dreams, or getting ready for sitting, or if you're in a different time zone, whatever has happened. Letting go also of the future, of the plans for the day. You can pick them up later. Tell them you will pick them up later. Thank you, but not now. Giving our hearts fully, completely, to this practice in this moment.

Noticing if there is tension anywhere in the body. And if there is, kindly, gently, caressingly, let it be released, softened, relaxed. Really taking the time to befriend this body in this moment in time. Hello, dear body. How are you? Where are you tight, my dear? And inviting these areas to release, to relax. Really taking time. Not rushing to the next thing, but really taking our time, lovingly with the body.

Letting the breath be received in the abdomen and the whole body, and all the areas where there might be tightness or holding. Let the breath be life-giving, relaxing, soothing.

And if there's any internal noting, or conversation, or speech in general, notice the tone. Notice the quality of it. Is it kind? Is it gentle or harsh, this internal speech? Let there be kindness towards yourself with your inner speech, with your breath. Every breath calming, soothing, settling, awakening, cultivating.

And if thinking arises, just notice its tone. Notice its tone. Do not enmesh with the content. Notice the quality of the tone. Release the thought. Release the body that might have become tense, and begin again.

Notice what quality is present in the mind and heart. Calm? Restless? Bored? Happy? Sad? How does it show up in the body? And we make space for everything, whatever is present. Relax, release. Make space for everything to arise, stay for a while, and pass. It's all okay. Such is the nature of being human in this moment. Including it all. Your full catastrophe with heart, with expansiveness, patience, and wisdom.

And as we approach the end of the sitting, noticing what's present. Celebrating any more goodness that's present. Gratitude, calm, spaciousness, kindness, wisdom—the beautiful qualities of the heart. If there are challenges, challenging emotions present in the mind and the heart, it's okay. Bringing some kindness to them. Holding them with kindness, with compassion.

And letting go of any judgment or expectation for what this period should have been, must have been, or what didn't happen. Let all that go. It is not necessary. You showed up! That's all that matters. Appreciating yourself, and the whole sangha for their support.

And together offering our goodness to all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere be healthy and at ease. May all beings, including ourselves, be free.

Thanks everyone for your practice.

Wise Speech (1/5): Is It True and Factual?

For the reflections today, and for this week, I'd like to share teachings on wise speech, which is a very important part of the Eightfold Path^[2]. As I briefly mentioned, even if we don't get the chance to have a formal sitting or meditation practice on a particular day, we pretty much every day engage with speech. Either externally with others, or internally in the way we talk to ourselves and treat ourselves. Speech is always happening internally, if not externally.

Speech forms our personality, it forms our mind, and it forms the person we become. Sometimes, actually, our speech may not correspond to who we think we are. Through cultivating wise speech—taking it on as a formal practice, not just saying, Yeah, yeah, I'm truthful enough, but actually taking it as a formal practice—we can really engage in, shape, and support our development. I don't want to make it sound tight or overly serious, but wise speech is a profound practice. It is profound in shaping who we are and what we are.

There are various definitions for what wise speech is, and the Buddha also teaches ways or questions to ask ourselves. This week I will go through them all through multiple lists. The Buddha has different lists, and if you combine them—one list has four definitions and one has five—we end up with six guidelines or questions to ask ourselves. Given that we have five days in the week, one day I'll cover two of them so that we can cover all six.

First, I want to say one more thing about speech. In the Eightfold Path, wise speech shows up pretty much right after wise perspective (or wise view) and wise intention. Of course, the root of everything is our perspective—how we see something, what our view of the world is. Then comes our intention, forming a compass for action. The third one is wise speech. So it comes right after the first two fundamental factors. What holds the whole practice up is really our view, our perception, and the intention we set.

In order to practice wise speech, I suggest two general directions that will apply to every question we'll cover this week. First is to make a commitment. Make a commitment to engaging with wise speech. That commitment is the second path factor, wise intention. You decide: This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to engage to speak skillfully, appropriately. I will not gossip, not lie, not be unkind, and so on.

Then, later in real time as we're actually speaking, we pause. We feel into our bodies. If we are about to stretch the truth, tell a white lie, or gossip, we feel into our bodies. What's going on? Am I stressed? Do I feel threatened? Am I trying to self-aggrandize? Feeling into the body: Oh sweetheart, yeah, interesting that's what's going on. Okay. And then, can we reconnect with our intention? These are the basic ways to engage.

One more thing to say about the Pali^[3] terminology. In the Eightfold Path, appropriate speech or wise speech is Sammā vācā^[4]. The word sammā is sometimes translated as 'right'—right speech. Early in my practice, when I heard 'right,' it sounded so puritan. 'Right' speech versus 'wrong' speech. Actually, the word sammā really means appropriate, as in using the appropriate tool. For example, the appropriate tool for hitting the bell is the bell striker. It's not a pen or a mug. So what's the appropriate speech? What is the wise or appropriate speech in a given situation?

Today, I'd like to cover the first guideline: Is it true and factual?

Truthfulness is a moral commitment. In fact, it is said that in the progression of a bodhisattva^[5] going through many, many lifetimes to become a full Buddha, the commitment to the truth is so important that it is the only moral precept that a bodhisattva cannot and does not break. Not only symbolically, but this shows that our commitment to truthfulness really is the foundation of the whole path. It is the foundation of our awakening. If we have a funny relationship to the truth, our commitment to awakening is not quite straightforward.

The Buddha talked about how dangerous lying is, because it leads to a slippery slope of more complicated behaviors. You have to tell more lies to cover the first one, leading to more moral corruption. There is actually research that supports this. As we know, when we tell a lie, it betrays trust in relationships, and others have trouble trusting us later. As Nietzsche said, "I'm not upset that you lied to me; I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you." Very powerful words.

I want to tell you about a fascinating study. I'll share a brief version here. Researchers wanted to study lying and how it can impact the brain. They set up a situation where subjects were tempted to lie just a little bit to get some financial reward, which was tiny. At first, the participants lied a little bit; they exaggerated a tiny bit when estimating the number of pennies in a jar.

When they upped it just a little bit, their amygdala—the part of the brain that serves as the alarm network related to fear—would engage. There was a sense of discomfort, like, I don't want to lie, but I did. There's a sense of discomfort in the body. As the experiment progressed, people's lies became bigger and bigger, so that by the end of the experiment, they were wildly overestimating the number of pennies. Lying snowballed.

But what's amazing, actually, is that their amygdala became less reactive. That's profound. Their bodies didn't feel as uncomfortable lying anymore. They had trained their bodies, their hearts, and their minds to feel more comfortable with lying. Through their behavior, they had changed their moral compass.

Our bodies are in many ways our moral compass. With mindfulness of the body, we feel into what's happening, and it acts as our tuning fork. Through our actions, we can shape and form our bodies to become either less or more sensitive to our moral conduct. We can become more or less sensitive to our humanity, to our goodness. That is astounding, and yet not surprising, right?

So, commitment to truthfulness really is paramount. It is the first and foremost invitation of wise speech. I also want to mention that in some suttas^[6], the question to ask ourselves is not just, "Is what I'm about to say true?" The question is actually, "Is it true and factual?"

That nuance of "is it factual?" is very important. The truth is not relative. It's not "my truth" versus "your truth." Yes, we all have our perceptions and perspectives, but the Buddha suggests that we examine if our truth is supportable. Is what I consider to be the truth supported by facts?

Oh, this person is mean. They meant to hurt me. Wait a minute, is that really supported by facts, or is it just our perceptions and feelings? Yes, it is true we were hurt; we can say that. But can we attribute intentionality? Or is it simply, "They said this, I said that"? It's like a third-person conversation.

There's a book that I love and highly recommend called Difficult Conversations. We all need to have impactful conversations in our lives. This book, which to me is a beautiful Dharma book, talks about how we separate the impact that something had on us from intentionality. One part of the conversation is acknowledging how we perceive something. Another part is putting ourselves in the other person's shoes to see things from their perspective. And then there is a third-person conversation, which is objective—just what happened. They said that, I said this, they did that. Just very simple, without any interpretation, without any attribution of intentionality. It's objective.

This addition of "Is it true and factual?" is a very important nuance that the brilliant Buddha added.

There is a lot more to say, but I'm happy to be practicing together and sharing the Dharma. Take good care, have a wonderful day, and I look forward to continuing tomorrow. Be well.