Right Speech

Ango: peaceful dwelling.





So can I peacefully tell the man who is sitting in the car next to mine in the strip mall parking lot that he is doing injury to himself, his family and all sentient beings by idling his engine with the air conditioning on while he waits for his wife who's either buying stamps or having her eyes examined or trying to decide between poppyseed and sesame bagels?

What about a friend who is agonizing over the mouse held tight in the grip of a glue trap on her newly remodeled kitchen floor? Can I ease her way by inviting her to get over it?

Rilke said, "Patience is everything." I don't doubt it. But so is intention. And ego.

The man in the parked car? My intention, were I to speak to him, would be to get him to change his behavior, and possibly his world view, a long shot. If his world view included concerns about global warming, he probably wouldn't be running the engine. And my introducing the subject might actually fuel (!) his disdain for tree huggers like me. But I don't think there's a lot of ego here. It's not just for me that I'd ask. And it's not just for me that I dropped my letters in the mail box, got in my Prius and headed for home. But I'm not through with this inquiry. I suspect one of these days I'm going to take on a member of this man's tribe. I can't make his dwelling peaceful in such an encounter, but I can dwell peacefully in my own intention to wish him and me and all sentients beings a forestalling, a remediation of the environmental catastrophe I think we're facing. Except I don't think I'm going to say it like that.

My friend and the glue-trapped mouse? That's pure ego. Intention? To get her to change her behavior--actually I don't care what she does about the mouse. I just want her to stop talking about it. Probably, a kindly stated, "Can we move on to something else?" would cover it.

There's a tradition in my family. We call it "honesty," but it's got a sinister side. I saw it in my mother as a sense of vindictive entitlement--she learned it from her mother. I see it in myself--not the vindictiveness but the urge to purge. Thankfully, there is room in zazen (seated meditation) for this urge and all others. Where I dwell on the cushion (in my case, on the chair) all such things are passing clouds. Or they are whole dark skies from which I need not avert my gaze. And in the world beyond zazen? Pema Chodron writes about a pause of three complete breaths before we act. In that short while whole weather systems come and go. What's left to say or do in the wake of three inhalations, three exhalations? Less and less, I hope I find, and maybe, just maybe what remains is of finer stuff, righter stuff.

Someone asked Suzuki Roshi why he practiced zazen. He said it was with the hope that in the face of an emergency, he'd know what to do. Me too. Big sky mind can hold it all, the ease, the upset. I hear that siren blaring. Now's my chance. Breathe, yes. Speak, maybe.