Be wise and discerning in sharing yourself, understand the audience, and their perspective. Many things people won’t be able to understand, or they will judge you negatively based on what you tell them due to ignorance of the nature of the situation, and that’s alright, and not a terrible thing, people have different perspectives and understandings, and predicting the effect of our speech is important in discerning what we should say. All speech that is withholding, often denoted as a “white lie” is not exactly dishonest, but can at times be appropriate. White lies become immoral when the information withheld would be beneficial and useful to the observer, more so than detrimental, the discerning of such effects is clearly quite a task to carry out, but, with experience and greater understanding of people’s psychology, we can better predict the resultant effects of speech. Every situation, every person, every moment, contains within it the possibility of good and bad, and what we say, or reveal, contains the same possibility. Intention and desired outcome is important, the reason why we say something is something that truly should matter to us, and we should look to understand why we want to say certain things to certain people, and in this way we can better understand our own nature.

 Correct speech is based upon honesty, but also usefulness and beneficiality, some things said, although they may be factual, are not the best way of teaching or helping another. At times it is easy to assume that it is always a good thing to tell the truth and if something really happened or if we truly are thinking about something in the moment, then there is no crime done in sharing it with someone. This isn’t as obviously useful and beneficial as it may initially seem, and often times, this line of thinking does not lead to an optimal outcome. There is a way to remain honest, and display an idea, without involving the ego, without causing suffering. There are many times when a certain form of honesty can be unvirtuous, in those words which are truthful yet hold bad intentions, or intentions solely focused on painting our own image, or those utterances stemming from an unintegrated part of the psyche, such as the persona. This doesn’t mean that the flip side isn’t true. There isn’t anything wrong with helping someone else get to know us, and our intentions can still be pure in doing this, if we are mindful of it and deem it wise to do so. This is more beneficial than just letting the ego run wild in building a picture of ourselves to impress the other person, such as in persona dominance, but genuinely sharing information that is pertinent to the other person getting to know us, because they have told us they wish to do so. In many cases there are two sides to one coin, and we should look to integrate both sides into one overarching view, in all subject matters of importance.

In practical usage, we must be careful with our speech, to the degree we do so, the better our experience. In Buddhist doctrine, Correct Speech is characterized by a number of factors that, in each individual distinction, we can see the benefit of, but in the totality, may be “perfectionist” or stressful to uphold. The idea here isn’t to stress ourselves out, but rather, strive to perfection, and see how we can better use our speech towards beneficial and useful means. In Buddhism correct speech is characterized by the complete abstinence of any speech that is not beneficial and useful, not conducive to aiding the other person, or yourself, in alleviating suffering and providing wellbeing. Speech must be unequivocally true, and based on intentions towards the wellbeing of others. Speech that is untrue, unbeneficial, promoting unwholesome actions such as violence, stemming from ignorance, “Wrong View” or not in alignment with the dharma, “Wrong Intentions” or ill-will, speech stemming from negative emotion, such as anger, speech characterized as gossip and even idle chatter, are all considered “Wrong Speech”. Speech that is of other people, who are not around, in a way that criticizes their character, such as in gossip, is prohibited in Buddhist Correct Speech. While in our lives the criticism of another person can serve to aid the person we’re in conversation with by providing them useful knowledge, the gossiping that is here listed, is of a nature that is merely out of hate or ill-will for the person we are gossiping about. This type of speech creates division between people, rather than union, we should aim at bringing people closer together in harmony, rather than creating separation. Any speech that springs from bad intentions, that merely looks to paint ourselves in a deceptively “good” light, through the admonition of another, is considered wrong speech. But the Buddha expands to even more restrictive ends in his conceptualization of Correct Speech. Talk that is for entertaining purposes, talk of popular people, of events, of “village talk” or “idle talk” such as about politics, or inconsequential speech that doesn’t serve the purpose of alleviating suffering, or providing the truth about a better way to live, truth that is merely neutral in content and neither useful nor detrimental, is also admonished in the Buddhist conception. Any speech that is of a harsh tone, or stemming from anger, frustration, or negative emotion, rather than from a calm, peaceful, loving mind, is also to be stifled with mindfulness, and he states we should work to make our speech come from a place of love, while maintaining a soft, non-aggressive tone. In my opinion, this aspect of Buddhist Correct Speech is not optimal, always, as a general rule, it is practical, but there are situations in which I believe a harsher tone is necessary to convey the message, in times when the optimal solution or teaching must be characterized by some tough love, where our tone may be more aggressive. As long as the intentions are pure, the content is true, and the message is beneficial and useful, I believe the speech can be presented in a less than harmonious way. We ought not always embody trait agreeableness, there are times when being disagreeable is in our best interest.

Being mindful of the content of the present moment, in paying attention to what manifests itself as a precursor to our action in communicating using language, we can identify speech that is of any of the above admonished speech, and seek to consciously promote that speech which is wholesome. Mindfulness of the thought precursor behind speech may be hindering in “over thinking”, yet, until our character is sufficiently grown so that it’s spontaneous manifestations are in accordance with our value structure, we must promote the beneficial habit forming practice of being mindful of what we say. Until the source of speech is purified, we ought not respond spontaneously in conversation, that is, if we wish to cultivate the character trait of being able to produce Correct Speech. Mindfulness in regard to our current state of being, including our emotional state, can also inform us as to the source from which our speech is coming from. Any state of being that is characterized by negative emotion, and not one of good-will towards the conversant, ought to be mindfully avoided at the first sight of its recognition, in this way, we can use the Buddhist practice of paying attention to the present moment, to modify the speech which we produce, through being aware of our current state and its implied inclinations.

We should seek to be more careful and articulate in our speech, to be wise in everything we do or say. We may sometimes feel like we want to share something, for our own gain, and a lot of times this is okay, but also, a lot of times this is not the way to fix a problem, or to accept what has happened to us when the content is specifically producing negative emotions within us. Many times another person cannot solve these problems for us, we must seek to conquer our own demons before unleashing them upon the world. They are ours, and our responsibility, only with someone truly ready, truly a seeker, with little dust on their eyes, can we reveal the whole truth to. We must be wise in who, how, and when.

As far as following universal maxims, or dogmatic rules from which to follow in the use of Correct Speech, I think such rule following is quite dangerous, as novel situations need be handled with tailored responses, and often universal maxims fail to take into account extreme cases where they are less than optimal. When the stakes are highest, and the effect of true speech in terms of violence, or profound suffering results, we must be conscious of employing ulterior methods than the general values we have listed above in producing speech. Lying, deceiving, speech from ill-will, while generally are in fact beneficial, are not all inclusive to every situation we may find ourselves in, and in extremely rare cases, their implementation may be optimal towards the saving of life, or the preservation of life. If you still think along the lines of “I’m going to tell the truth, regardless of its content, it’s virtue,” then you are thinking to shallowly. There is so much more nuance to truth telling, sometimes the truly best thing to say is not the exact objective truth, but rather metaphorical truth, or the lesson learned from it. There are truths to useful way to operate in the world, and this itself can aide others in the navigation of their lives, we shouldn’t limit truth to purely objective and scientific truth, but expand it to the knowledge which would aide in progressing another person toward their goals, or in opening them up to the potentiality of a different perspective, or way to be in the world. While this may seem opinionated, if we look from the objective standpoint of better or worse solutions to alleviate suffering and provide lasting wellbeing, or better or worse ways of being to improve one’s journey towards a desired end, we can categorize, morally, the beneficial and useful nature of some content of knowledge in proportion to another, the revelation of this, would be metaphoric truth, or truth which can be used for practical purposes, insofar as it is an objectively better way of navigation towards a desired outcome. As in all else before, discerning when and how to reveal metaphorical truth is a task of prudence, and experiential knowledge of effects of certain concepts and ideas can better serve us as data points to use as reference to know the proper speech given a situation.

Events and experiences need to be filtered through the language of the audience, in order to have a meaningful connection. The language we use should be tempered by the person we are in conversation with, we wouldn’t explain a concept the same way to an academic colleague as we would our child, although the same “truth” may be present in each, the way we go about articulating the idea, the terminology and form of rhetoric we use in conveying it, must be appropriate so that the knowledge conveyed is in terms understandable to the audience. Be yourself, but be wise, and don’t follow a simple maxim. We should constantly be updating our articulation of concepts, and ideas, so as to better be able to represent them symbolically in the speech we use to convey them, as well as, obviously, to sharpen up our conceptualizations into a more useful format. The way we do this with our speech, it has been argued, creates the thoughts which fill our experience, so a more precise and articulate way of conceptualizing, for ourselves, produces a greater ability to categorize and judge reality as we experience it, modifying our experience and shaping the way we see the world. As we become more articulate, and better able to clearly conceptualize reality, the clearer we can make distinctions, and the better teachers we come, effecting our speech positively. Look deeper, think harder, doing and saying the right thing isn’t easy, because its implications can be long lasting and significant. Its effect can change more than we can calculate, and anything that comes from us we must take responsibility for. This doesn’t mean over analyze every word, but in general, we must work to ever improve our speech, if we wish to live our best potential lives, and to aide others in their journey. It’s not always in telling someone the answer that teaches them, but sometimes the question, or the journey, is more valuable.