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Dennis Merritt Jones, The Art of Being
We can learn to be honest in all of our relationships without being brutal. It requires nothing more than conscious intention to make yourself heard in a manner that is nonthreatening, non-harming, and peaceful. The best place to start this process is with those closest to you. They are the ones with whom we tend to be the most brutal in our communication.
We can learn to be honest in all of our relationships
Donna Schaper, Sacred Speech
Speech is a gift from God and we have a choice to use our mouths virtuously, in the most humble and searching sense of that word. . . . I usually call this God "Spirit," as a way of being as inclusive as possible. I believe in one God who is beyond the claim of any and every name. As a Christian, I believe Jesus is a most excellent way to God but not the only excellent way to God.
Speech is a gift from God
Donna Schaper, Sacred Speech
A great deal of miscommunication and misinformation happens because the people who are conversing lack spiritual humility. They want to walk away justified, redeemed, made right and whole by the other. This form of self-justification is unjustified.
To speak sacredly, we become multilingual, even if we speak only one language. We acknowledge diversity at its and our depths, as origin, alpha and omega. We learn to speak glocally.
We learn to speak glocally
Geshe Michael Roach, Christine McNally, The Essential Yoga Sutra
The different forms of self-control are avoiding harm to anyone, always telling the truth, never stealing from another . . .
The first of the eight limbs of yoga is self-control, the ability in a sense to restrain ourselves from our more natural, lower instincts. Only of the five most crucial forms of self-control are given.
The first is simply to avoid hurting other people; and remember that in the ancient books of wisdom, "people" means any living creature, however small and apparently unintelligent, since obviously they all feel pain and seek to avoid it.
The most serious form of hurting is to kill or cooperate in the killing of a human being. All of the ancient texts also state that a human being begins at conception, as consciousness enters the just-combined sperm and egg.
Really speaking the truth is difficult: it means never giving someone else even a slightly different impression from what you know to be true. The most serious lie is to make false claims about our spiritual realizations. It's also just generally good to avoid divisive talk, harsh words, and idle pratter.
Stealing is to take or use another person's property without their permission, which includes sneaking phone calls at work; dirtying up the city which we all pay for with our taxes; or ruining the Earth for coming generations.
The different forms of self-control are
Donna Schaper, Sacred Speech
Sacred speech opens doors and takes risks. The markers of sacred speech are:
• An acknowledgment of the presence of God in the words we use,
• A maximization of the possibility of love and caring,
• A minimization of fear.
• Linkage, connection, contact: Sacred speech bridges divides.
Sacred speech opens doors
Hal W. French, Zen and the Art of Anything
When you are not on speaking terms with someone else, you are withholding your life from that person.
When you are not on speaking terms
Edward Hays, Prayer Notes to a Friend
Consider that silence is a particular form of speech. In Jewish mysticism we find the contradictory expression, "silent speech," referring to a prayer known as the royal path to God. The divine economy of this two-dimensional prayer is illustrated in an old Jewish proverb: "speech is worth a penny, silence is worth two."
Silent speech is the royal path to god
Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Sri Ramakrishna, The Face of Silence
Ramakrishna used to tell a story about himself: Once he went to call on a great initiate, Tailanga. Tailanga lived in Benares. But he observed a strict vow of silence. No one ever heard him speak. Ramakrishna came back from his visit to that silent initiate and told us all about it. He said, "Wonderful talks he and I had. Nearly a week we sat beside each other and meditated. A great talker is Tailanga; he unburdens his thoughts with such clear words." We said to Ramakrishna, "But he never speaks." Ramakrishna answered, 'What has that got to do with it?"
No one ever heard him speak.
Peter Fingesten, Carole Fingesten, Plain Living
Silence is the inaudible echo
of the voice of God
which is heard with the ears of the heart.
It is not simply the absence of speech
but a state of being.
Silence is the inaudible echo of the voice of God
Anthony de Mello, Contact With God
Modern humanity finds silence particularly irksome. We find it hard to sit still with ourselves. We are always itching to be up and about, to do something, to say something; we cannot act, and so most of our activity is not free, creative, dynamic as we like to think it is; it is compulsive. When you acquire the ability to sit still and be silent, you will be free to act or not, to speak or not, and then your speech and your activity will take on new depth and power.
Modern humanity finds silence particularly irksome.