SPIRITUAL PRACTICE§
Harnessing Speech
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Contemplation and Discipline Insure Ahimsa in Your Daily Interactions §
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B Y SW A M I N I M A Y A T I T A N A N D A§
HE HUMAN VOICE AS A DIVINE INSTRUMENT IS A POWER-ful, foundational tool for living a life of ahimsa. It is the basis of our individuality and creative expression. However, the human voice is our most misunderstood and misused possession. We take our voice for granted—using and abusing it for the most mundane, trivial and hurtful communications—forgetting to honor it as the divine instrument of ahimsa within us.§
The voice of ahimsa:
Thinking before speaking§
The seers emulated the primordial sound in order to fashion the first human expression, called shruti, the cosmic revelation as heard by the rishis. Shruti is also referred to as the Word, and the song of Sama Veda informs us that, “Verily, if there were no Word, there would be no knowledge neither of right or wrong, nor of truth and untruth, nor of the pleasing and unpleasing. The Word makes all this known.” This original Word informed Vedic ritual speech, mantras, chants and music, which carry the cosmic rhythms and memory of the universe’s entire experience. The rishis declared the spoken word, shruti, as their most significant contribution to humanity. Most ancient people left their imprint on history through the medium of precious materials—gold, silver, bronze, onyx and granite. While time has eroded these monuments, the Vedic tradition’s rich legacy of the spoken word, recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, still lives on.§
Most of us are conscious of the foods we eat, the air we breathe, the postures we emulate and other spiritual practices we do to bring good health, yet we are unaware of the negative impressions we imbibe by way of our senses from unwholesome talk, chaotic interaction and the barrage of discordant sounds we take into our personal lives through television and other media. A mind that is bombarded with violent impressions will become desensitized and express itself in angry and insensitive ways. Eric’s story is a classical illustration of exactly this challenge. §
I met Eric several years ago at a meditation workshop in New York. He was seventeen years old and had been recently expelled from school for verbally abusing his teacher. Eric’s mother, Marion, was a prominent yoga teacher. She confided to me that Eric had been a quiet boy and an excellent student until he fell in with a “bad crowd” in the neighborhood. §
After listening to Marion, I asked to speak with Eric privately. As he slouched in the chair beside me, he refused to make eye contact. I closed my eyes and waited for him to speak. After several tense minutes, he broke the silence. “She is always screaming at me, demanding that I do the things that make her happy. But what about me? She is so caught up in her work she doesn’t even know who I am. She pushes me to do all these health things. My friends think I’m a sissy—eating health food, washing the dishes, chanting....” For twenty minutes, or so, Eric blurted out his story nonstop. All I could hear was the young man’s anger about being pushed by Marion’s anger and his frustration about feeling inadequate and not “fitting in” with his friends. Marion had good intentions for her son, but like many parents who underestimate their children’s intelligence she had missed the most important lesson—listening to her son’s needs and communicating with him. The more she forced Eric to adhere to her values, the farther away Eric ran. Suddenly, as he became a teenager, he found a voice of violence in the popular culture that had heard him and he began to retaliate against his mother’s tyranny. To compensate for the support he felt he was not getting at home, Eric had found negative reinforcement from his street buddies and seized the opportunity to express himself. He was true to his voice of anger. It was Marion who had not yet found her voice of peace. Although she had been practicing yoga for twelve years, she has still not found the true meaning behind spiritual practice—the spirit of nonviolence and nonhurting that would finally help her to communicate its wondrous essence to her son. §
I have developed the Vac Tapasya, “Speech Penance,” to evoke healthy, harmonious thoughts and bring forward positive, pleasant words. Spend fifteen minutes at the end of every day allowing your mind to run free. Notice whatever negative, hurtful thoughts that may come up. Write down those thoughts and the person or situations they concern, without whitewashing or censoring them. Let yourself be angry, judgmental and unkind. And above all, be honest. Repeat each negative thought aloud. For example: “Mary is so demanding. I can’t bear to work with her.” Then recite the attitude of one seeking true inner knowledge: “I know that every negative thought reflects my own inner condition.” §
Now take responsibility for your feelings from which the negative thought sprang: “I am being intolerant of Mary. It will not be pleasant for Mary if I see her with this attitude.” This will help you learn to always carefully consider your words before you speak them aloud to another person, and to avoid an angry, accusatory or aggressive tone. If you feel pressured to respond or speak in a way that you think may be hurtful to another person, use your notebook to tell this person your raw, unedited feelings in the form of a letter that you do not send. Let the letter sit for a week. Then, before you read it, make one small change. Replace the name of the person to whom it is addressed with your own name. This may help you understand that the letter has less to do with the person with whom you are angry, and is more about your hurt feelings, which stem from your negative thoughts and feelings about your own life. The Maitri Upanishad put it this way: “Words cannot describe the joy of the spirit whose spirit is cleansed in deep contemplation—who is one with his/her own Spirit. Only those who experience this joy knows what it is.” §
Sri Swamini Mayatitananda is founder of the Wise Earth School and the Mother Om Mission. Wise Earth, 90 Davis Creek Road, Candler, North Carolina 28715 USA. Phone: 828-258-9999.
Email: health@wisearth.org.
World Wide Web: www.wisearth.org.§