The Magic 8-fold Path: Right Speech

Word to your word, word for word

This is a series exploring Buddhism’s foundational and well-loved frameworks. If you’ve been curious about Buddhism or yourself in relation to the world, or if you need any kind of buoy at this time, this is for you.

We start with the Eightfold Path. Catch up on previous issues (with audio!) here.

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Hello friends,

We’re back on the paaaath, the Eightfold Path. It’s been some time since we reflected on a step — last we met it was the second step — but that’s OK. This isn’t a normal path, it’s a coooool path. Cool as in fluid, little tricky, giving, but steady. Always there for you!

I just stumbled across “Realms of the Dharma” an exhibit at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which features nearly 200 pieces of Buddhist art from across Asia. Most of the pieces were statue representations of the Buddha themself - eyes closed, seated, and wise. Or their various incarnations such as Avalokiteśvara (the compassionate actor), or key moments in Buddhist history and lore. Everywhere Buddhism spread from its birth place in India across Asia, it co-mingled with indigenous practices, beliefs, and realities.

Nothing can successfully “spread” without a host to receive it — offering to the mix what it already contains to give rise to something new. Nothing can be transplanted successfully without absorption and integration. Hey! You’re part of it. Everything is a continuation and also emerging entirely anew.

I say stumbled because I had no idea the exhibit was there and didn’t go to see it intentionally. The dharma just sneaks up on your sometimes. “This whole exhibit seems anathema to Buddhism itself,” my husband offered. He had a point. So solid, so precious, so rigidly appointed as if to say, “THIS IS BUDDHISM.”

But really it was 200 beautiful reminders that everything we see, hear, touch, and feel is illusory not essential in nature. The Buddha is laughing, always.

The Eightfold Path is a series of opportunities the Buddha offers for us to remember this slipperiness, so that we can take a deep breath and laugh too. You’re on the path — this water slide — if you set your mind and actions to it. Your best intentions and bring awareness back to it again and again for the discovery ride.

Photo by James Yu on Unsplash

We’re now at step three: right speech.

First came right view, which, you recall, is about doing the work to get yourself o-u-t of a rigid, grasp-y, narrative-heavy world view and into a spacious, wavy groundlessness. Things are not any one way, they just are. Then came right intention, the energy you show up with in your life based on your grounding in that spacious, wavy view. In a nutshell, it’s about loosening the grip to find true ground.

We also spent some time exploring the Buddha’s use of the word “right” in his explanation of the Eightfold Path. That it isn’t “right” as in “the opposite of wrong,” but rather juuuuuuust riiight, denoting a sense of balance but also of perfect, direct, as-it-is-ness. There isn’t a story to any of it because it is just pure truth.

Are you with me?

Are you with you, more importantly. You are. Trust you, you are.

The third step right speech seems pretty straightforward (hallelujah!) and in many ways it is: don’t be a liar or an asshole!

And yet we live inside a snow globe of noise. Humans have probably gossiped since before we stood up on two feet and sharing information is how we forge, maintain, and navigate relationships. It’s how we flex our voice and share ourselves with the world. But we are fundamentally storytellers.

The truth is just as elusive as it has always been, yet somehow even more so in this late-stage capitalist Trumpian age of GenAI internet. We are caught in and help to create an icky sticky web that makes discernment elusive.

Our phones listen in so they can dish us want we want to buy, know, and hear; we feed our algorithms our most secretive queries and uncertainties so expert marketers can confirm them with things to buy or do. From LinkedIn to Substack to Instagram, SnapChat, Strava, blah blah blah we have a billion ways we can mindlessly share information — either pass along someone else’s or throw out our own.

This cacophany is on top of the fundamental complexity of being human. This entails rambling or fumbling our words. Misspeaking, misrepresenting, talking out of turn, saying things we don’t mean in the throes of emotion. Speaking up when we shouldn’t, or staying quiet when we shouldn’t. This is all part of being human. Language is perhaps our greatest gift and our liability.

But aren’t words… isn’t all language, non-verbal included… the absolute best?! What language allows us to create, convey, inspire, and conjure? What a dream. What a tapestry. What a reality-carver. What an experience-maker.

In the Buddhist context, right speech refers to perfect communication. Perfect in the sense of its pureness in clarity, directness, and illumination. It really hits.

No spin, no story.

Right speech is the minimum simplicity required to convey the truth.

There is a blatant honesty and expert precision to it that is only possible because of the utter genius inherent in language itself. Choose your words wisely, and they will open up the entire world.

Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. No more, no less.

Tougher to lock into than you think. Oftentimes what we perceive and purvey as “truth” is just a story. A story woven of fantastic delusions, biases, and expectations. It might be a damn great story, but a story nonetheless. It takes effort—practice—to self-identify and self-erode story layers, drawing closer to truth.

When performing a C-section, a doctor must delicately but decisively slice through seven important layers to free the little being contained within.

First the skin, then the layer of fat just beneath; then the fascia and the muscles of the abdominals. Next, they must move through the thin layer lining the inside of the abdominal cavity, called the peritoneum, to the uterus itself and finally the translucent casing of the amniotic sac. The thinnest but strongest veil between a not-yet-earthling and an earthling. This must be performed with utmost attention and patience, yet celerity.

With a similar determination and care, we can deftly move through layers of stories toward truth. Will we ever reach pure truth, freeing it like a newborn out into the world? We certainly will not if we do not even try.

What I’m saying is that the practice of aligning and grounding your words — and the myriad other ways you communicate your heart / vision / experience — is itself a deeply worthwhile and holy process. You won’t ever always get it right, but you’re on the right path.