2021-06-15 The Dharmic Life (2 of 5) Attention to Speech

Insight Meditation Center14min

Gil Fronsdal

00:02

The topic for this week is how to replicate at home, in your daily life, some of the benefits that come from living a religious life in the Dharma – for example, on a retreat, or living in a monastery. Some people will have a strong desire to plunge more deeply into the practice. Sometimes, because of family or work, they cannot go off and spend some serious amount of time devoting themselves to the Dharma.

Gil Fronsdal

00:45

That is quite a wonderful desire to deepen that way. I support it wholeheartedly. You can get a lot of those benefits by practicing in ordinary life. Sometimes when we are practicing in everyday life, and not leaving to go someplace special, the practice has an honesty to it and richness. We are really addressing some of the issues of our life, rather than avoiding them. Thinking, while avoiding them off in the monastery, we can somehow make progress.

Gil Fronsdal

01:29

There are some simple ways that in principle are not very complicated. In practice, they can be quite significant and profound. Yesterday I talked about bringing more attention to the body, living a more embodied life. Coming back to your body over and over again, throughout the day, whatever you are doing. Seeing and understanding what is happening in the body. Learning from the experience of the body.

Gil Fronsdal

02:04

Today, I want to emphasize speech – how we talk. That can be talking with our voice. It can be communication we do electronically. It can be how we talk to ourselves, our self-talk.

Gil Fronsdal

02:26

There are many things to say about Right Speech and speaking well. There is a tendency in Buddhism to look at it more from the ethical side, like I did last Sunday. We evaluate it by the impact or how it is we are doing it.

Gil Fronsdal

02:48

The other way is to practice mindfulness of speaking. Not so much looking at whether what we are saying is beneficial, true, kind, or timely. These are all good criteria for knowing how we speak. But, to simply bring non-judgmental awareness, mindfulness, to our speech, and to our communication itself.

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