To Speak or Not to Speak

I started blogging almost three and a half years ago, and the third post I wrote was entitled “Deadly Poison.”  It was about the dangers of the tongue and referenced James 3:8.  I was reminded of this post recently by Neil Locke, a new friend I discovered on the nets, when he posted an entry on his own blog titled “Vow of Silence.”  In it Neil reflects on his “diarrhea of the mouth,” a disease I have myself, and ponders what it might be like to practice silence as a discipline.  Calling our attention to Cistercian Trappist monasticism, he writes:

While it is certainly a misconception that trappist monks take a “vow of silence” along with their vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, they do place a high value on limiting one’s speech to bare essentials in certain situations, and at certain times of the day. As best as I can understand it, this is an attempt to both cultivate an atmosphere of contemplation, and to practice self-discipline in communication. I imagine it also forces them to be better listeners and reflective thinkers.

To become a better listener and more reflective thinker . . . seems like a noble goal to me.  I know that I am as prone to negative and destructive speech as the next person (maybe even more so), and I’d like to think that I can, with God’s help, become better at watching what I say.   Neil’s post also reminded me of the “Three Gates of Speech” that can be found in many Buddhist and Hindu writings.  These gates of speech are meant to give a person pause before opening his or her mouth and perhaps saying something he or she shouldn’t say.  Before speaking, one should ask three questions:

Is what I’m about to say the truth?

Is what I am about to say kind?

Is what I am about to say necessary?

Only when one can answer these three questions in the affirmative, thus going through the three gates of speech, does one open his or her mouth to say something.

Needless to say (but I will say it anyway, because that’s how I am), practicing such a discipline would drastically cut down on all the noise and chatter around us.  It would also drastically reduce the negativity common in everyday conversation.  The only trouble I see with using these gates of speech as a kind of filter is that a lot of us might be left without anything to say at all.

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You can read more about the Three Gates of Speech on Sally Kempton’s website, which can be found here.