Monday, April 11, 2016

Complete Silence (Purification of Speech)

Listen deeply to the following Thay's teaching on "Complete Silence (Purification of Speech)". 
http://tnhaudio.org/2016/04/02/purification-of-speech/
The followings are the excerpts.

Quote:
We will practice the complete silence for us to have a chance to observe the energy in us whether positive or negative.

There is a practice called the purification of speech. You don't talk. And you observe the ideas, the feelings that come up in you. 

If you want to say something, you want to react to say something, instead of saying it, don't say it, write it down. ... 
Something that is not to your liking. Something that make you angry, that make you irritated, make you sad. Instead of trying to say it out to another person, don't say it, write it down. 

When strong feelings come up, instead of saying it to someone to show your feeling, talk about your feeling, practice mindful breathing, embrace your feeling, write it down here. One line about the nature of your feeling. Your feeling and if possible, the nature of your feeling. Learn to observe your feeling, your idea. And you may like to practice looking deeply in order to see the true nature of the feeling, of the idea.

After a few days, you read the sentences that you have written down. The sentences that represent what you want to tell the other person. You see that you don't need to say it at all. This is about the habit energy, the negative habit energy that is strong in us. Sometimes we say that is stronger than us.

We know that if we said that, if we did that, we would destroy, we would cause damage to our relationship with the other person to cause damage within us and within the other person. And yet, we have said it, we have done it. And then we regret a lot. ... That is the habit energy in us.

When we say something that is not to our liking, we have a tendency to react right away, to say something right away. We react strongly because it seems that we believe that reacting like that will help us feel better. The result is the opposite

If we feel irritated and if we react angrily like that, we suffer more and we also destroy something in us and something around us. If only we can refrain from saying, or from doing that, instead we write it down, and if we can go to sleep one night, and next morning when we read what we have written, we know that it's good that the other day, yesterday, we didn't say it. 

Many of the things we say in our daily life, are not truly necessary. And many of the things we say, also have the power of destroying, causing damage in us and in the other persons. That is why the practice of silence is the practice that can help us to observe the habit energy in us. Mindfulness, every time it is lit up, it can recognize the habit energy. 

The habit energy, you won't be able to push us to say it or do it again. Every time we are able to recognize the habit energy, we will keep it from overwhelming us and causing damage in us and in our relationship. And that habit energy will go back to the depth of our consciousness as a seed. And a little bit weaker than before. 
:Unquote

(My commentary)
Stopping is vital when strong emotion arises. That's because our thinking, speech and action will be negative or violent when we are not mindful. Just doing nothing to wait for the strong emotion will go away is very effective. And during our stopping, we can concentrate on resting, calming and healing through mindful breathing. When we are angry or depressed, we (ego, separate self) live in forgetfulness. And we can't recognize what is going on inside and around us. To the contrary, when we are calm and peaceful, we (awareness, non-separate self, true self) live in mindfulness and can recognize what is going on inside and around us. Therefore, mindful breathing is very useful to calm down our strong emotions through stopping. 

(Cf.) http://compassion5151.blogspot.jp/2016/04/notice-of-private-lessons-for-one-more.html


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