The Harm of Wrong Speech

Among the unwholesome courses of action (akusala-kammapatha), the paths of unwholesome kamma (intentional action), the ways of doing evil, the bad kamma that leads to decline, suffering or a bad destination, the Buddha said that kamma is of three kinds:

• Bodily kamma (kāya-kamma) has three paths: killing living beings, stealing, and sexual misconduct.
• Verbal kamma (vacī-kamma) has four paths: lying, harsh speech, divisive speech and idle chatter.
• Mental kamma (mano-kamma) has three paths: covetously eyeing what belongs to others (abhijjhā), wishing harm on others (byāpāda), and views that stray from the Dhamma (micchā-diṭṭhi).

Of bodily, verbal and mental kamma, verbal kamma is a big matter, the matter of speech: lying versus speaking the truth, speech that divides versus speech that brings harmony and unity, harsh speech (speaking out of aversion), where resentment and ill will arise and evil words come pouring out, and idle chatter, which is talk with no meaning and no Dhamma, rambling on: seeing a bird, talking about birds; seeing water, talking about water; seeing a mountain, talking about mountains. So verbal kamma is the hardest of all kamma to correct, as the following story shows.

A husband and wife had four daughters. The first was flirtatious, with a different partner every day and so many husbands that her parents could not remember their sons-in-law’s faces. The second liked to eat and ate a great deal. The third liked to steal, and the fourth liked to lie, speak harshly and speak divisively. The couple felt their daughters’ faults were so ingrained that they could not bring themselves to love them, so the parents set all of them adrift at sea.

At sea there were pirates, and the pirate chief was a paṇḍita, a person of great wisdom. Seeing the four, he reflected, “Pretty women cast out to sea must have some flaw.” The chief thought of correcting the habits of all four, and he could see what each one’s nature was.

The first, who liked having many husbands, the pirate took as his wife and had his men address her as “Madam”, and she was no longer promiscuous. The second, who liked to steal, he put in the treasury in charge of the keys, and she sat counting money and gold all day. The third, the big eater, he put in the kitchen, where she could eat every day until she was sick of it. But the fourth could not be corrected, because of her evil tongue: wherever she went, the people there did nothing but quarrel. Unable to change her ways, the chief left her to her fate and set her adrift on a raft.

As she drifted in the middle of the sea, two giant eagles saw her on the raft and thought to help her. They carried a stick in their beaks so that she could hang onto it and they could fly her to shore. But this woman had been adrift for so long that she could not bear having gone so many days without talking. She moved her hand closer to the eagles, flirted and acted seductively toward the male eagle, then climbed over to the female eagle and spoke ill of him, saying the male eagle had been flirting with her. This made the female eagle angry with her mate: she let go of the stick and chased him, pecking at him, and so the woman fell into the sea and died, her corpse floating in front of a monastery.

The abbot came down to the landing, saw her body and thought it was an unclaimed corpse with no relatives. So he took the skull and made it into an incense holder in the ordination hall, thinking that when the monks chanted, she would gain the merit to be reborn somewhere. But whenever the monks of that monastery chanted, they did nothing but quarrel and brawl. What was causing the division? Looking this way and that, they found it was the skull, so they took it and threw it away in the charnel ground.

Later, two men sneaked into the charnel ground to distil liquor. One of them, bleary-eyed, grabbed the skull to use as a hearthstone for the still, and the two of them started quarreling. So they burned the skull in the ashes until it was fine powder and threw it into a stream. The water of the stream flowed everywhere, and so the people who drank it lost their truthfulness.

This story teaches us that we easily pick up the speech and behavior of people like this. The germ of lying, divisive speech, harsh words and idle chatter is highly contagious. Sometimes we see someone lie and find we like it; someone who speaks the truth seems too naive; harsh words feel satisfying and fun to hear; divisive speech that sets people against each other seems really cool; idle chatter and lies mixed with truth seem funny. With wrong values like these, it becomes a way of creating problems for society, of stirring up panic over news and sparking false trends, of loving to advertise false claims. It becomes a mindless society, a consumer society, not a society of study and learning, and eventually it turns into a real problem.

So do not build values and a culture of lying, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle chatter. Study what results or problems come from speaking like this. Try bringing the results of such kamma, of such speech, to mind and reflecting on them, and you will see clearly. The bad results that come from speech are many: no one trusts you, you have problems with the health of your mouth and teeth, bad breath. Or if you see a fat person and tell them they are thin, or see a short person and tell them they are tall, the kamma of speaking like this means you yourself will get an unattractive figure. Having an unattractive personality, an unattractive face, a poor complexion and an ungraceful build mostly comes from verbal misconduct (vacī-duccarita).

One should utter only fine words,
never words that are evil and harsh.
Uttering fine words brings about what is good;
one who utters evil, harsh words comes to grief.