Declutter Your Speech

We often get the question, “How do you fit the practice into your daily life?” But the question should be, “How do you fit daily life into the practice?” In other words, you want your practice to be the container, the framework for your day. Then the events that you engage in with other people, with your tasks, should be embedded in the framework of the practice. And one of the issues that comes up, of course, is how much to talk.

Ajaan Fuang made a lot of this point. He said, “You ask yourself, before you say anything, ‘Is this necessary?’” It’s like those old signs they used to have back in World War II. They put them on trains. They wanted people not to travel too much, so the question on the sign was, “Is this trip necessary?” In the same way, you can ask yourself before your open your mouth, “Are these words necessary?” You find that just asking that question cuts down a lot on your speech.

When you’re working with other people, and it is necessary, there’s no problem with talking. But the problem is that once your mouth gets engaged, it gets really hard to turn it off. And the speech that we use as social grease sometimes gets like the grease in a car: You put too much on and everything stops. Gums up the works.

So. Moderation in conversation, as the Buddha called it, is an important part of creating the right environment in your practice—and fitting your words into the practice. Because your habits of outside speech get carried into the mind. If anything that pops in your mind just goes out your mouth, then anything pops in your mind slowly takes over the mind, which is why it’s hard to get the mind to settle down. But if you can simplify the clutter in your speech in the way that you would declutter your house, you find that you declutter your meditation. And when the meditation is decluttered, then you can settle down in peace and get some strength from the practice.

All the words going through your mind eat up your energy. So, use as little energy as possible and maximize your concentration. It’s one of the ways in which the practice takes priority and becomes the context for whatever else you do in life. To practice properly, we have to change a lot of our habits. Look at them from the point of the view of the question: Does this lead to more suffering or to less suffering? If it’s not leading to less suffering, it’s leading to more. Be very careful about how you dole out your words. After all, they say, “Silence is golden.” So if you’re going to break silence, your words have to be worth more than that.