"It’s good training to learn to look at your speech. If you have an absolute rule against speaking, then the mind just goes on chattering to itself, chattering all the time, to fill up the space. But if you’re allowed to speak, you’re reminded to speak wisely.
Ajaan Fuang had a good rule for this.
He said, “Ask yourself before you say anything, ‘Is this really necessary?’ If it’s not, you don’t say it.”
I found that when I first started to try to apply this rule to my own speech, it cut my speech down about 95%. You come to realize that a lot of the chatter in the course of the day is just that: idle chatter. It fills up the space, and you know what filler usually is: styrofoam peanuts. Shredded newspapers.
The problem is when you’re trying to fill up space, many times whatever comes into your mind pops out of your mouth without your really thinking about what the consequences are going to be. A lot of the speech that creates problems is composed of things you didn’t really intend to say but somehow they managed to come out.
So, try to show respect for the concentration of people around you, too. This way the fact that we have a lot of people here, instead of becoming a hindrance, actually becomes a help. Many people notice that when you sit in a room full of meditators it’s a lot easier to get concentrated. But then if you leave the room and everyone chatters, it just destroys it."
~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Respect for Concentration"
18 June 2023
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