This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wishing Oneself Well; The Five Precepts (3 of 5) Refrain from Harmful Speech. It likely contains inaccuracies.

7AM Sit and Talk 2025-09-10 07:46

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 12, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Wishing Oneself Well (link)

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, whatever time of day it is for you.

Arrive in this moment. Arrive and allow yourself to be here in this space. Take a deep breath. Know that you are breathing in this space. Be here. Let everything before this moment fall away. Be aware only of what you sense in this moment. Your body, your breathing here.

Welcome the sensing of your body in this space. Feel your toes, your feet, your legs, your hips, your belly. Take a deep breath and fill up the chest. Allow it to empty. Let your shoulders settle easefully here. Your arms gracefully present. Your hands just here. The stem of your neck, the ease of your head. Allow it to settle. Your chin slightly down, just a dip. Your body settling into the space of now. Now.

The air moving in and out of your body. The process of being alive. Just here. Just now. Just this.

Be aware that you're here. I'm here.

Allow yourself to be grateful for this body that allows you to be here, that houses you here. This body, this sensing being. I'm here. May I be well?

May any knots in my body untangle and just go free. Just feel easy here just for these moments while I'm here. And I can just breathe. Just breathe. This is enough. Just this.

Thank you myself for just being here for this, for these moments. May you be well. May I be well.

Just now, just here. It's safe to be well. I can be okay right here.

Gathering your attention, if it feels okay, somewhere that you identify as your core. Maybe your belly, maybe in your heart space, not in your head. Somewhere in the center of your body. Relax into that space. It's safe here right now. Right now, I can just breathe and I'm safe right here. Nowhere else to be just for these moments. All I have to do is allow the body to do what it does to be alive. I can just be here.

May I know this safety in my life, even if only for a moment at a time. May I be safe.

Aware of myself in this space. Breathing, feeling, hearing, relying on my body. Even thinking, thinking, thinking here in this space in this moment. I can trust this is me here in this space. I am aware of being here. I can trust.

Here is my breath. Here is sound. Here's the weight of my hands. Here is the softness of the air on my skin. Awareness. I can hear. I can trust. This is how it is now in this moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. I can trust this moment.

Not thinking but that I think and I breathe and the body senses this I can trust. And I take a deep breath and let it out again. Trust.

Dharmette: The Five Precepts (3/5); Refrain from Harmful Speech (link)

Good morning everyone. My name is Maria, and this morning we're going to continue our discussion of an ethical life, specifically the five precepts. Today we're going to talk about the precept to refrain from harmful speech, which is a gigantic topic. We can say very little about it in 15 minutes. So I want to read you a poem that talks about why we're doing this in the first place to sort of set the stage. This poem is by Wisława Szymborska, who is a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet, and it's called "Life While You Wait."

Life while you wait. Performance without a rehearsal. Body without alterations. Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play. I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it. I have to guess on the spot just what this play is all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living, I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands. I improvise, although I loathe improvisation. I trip at every step over my own ignorance. I can't conceal my hasty manners. My instincts are for ham-acting. Stage fright makes excuses for me which humiliate me more. Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back. Stars you'll never get counted. Your character like a raincoat you button on the run. The pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance or repeat a single Thursday that has passed. But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.

Is it fair? I ask (my voice a little hoarse, since I couldn't even clear my throat off stage). You'd be wrong to think it's just a slap-dash quiz taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no. I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is. The props are surprisingly precise. The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer. The farthest galaxies have been turned on. Oh no, there's no question. This must be the premiere. And whatever I do will become forever what I've done.

That's the crux of it. "And whatever I do will become forever what I've done." You know, we don't actually get to do life over. This is it. This is the whole thing. What we do now, what we say now, what we gesture now, how we move now. This is it.

The reason that we put emphasis on our ethical conduct, the way we live in the world, the way we make an effort to live with an open heart, the reason for that is this is the only chance we get to do that. We don't get to live it over. We actually don't get to live it over. Those are nice fantasies, but what we say now, that's it. We've said it.

And we've all had the experience of saying, "Oh, I wish I hadn't said that." Or we say something and it's totally misinterpreted. And we say, "But that's not what I meant." And the harm is done. And our goal is not to harm people by our speech. Or is it? And this is the crux of the matter: to be clear in our hearts. I do not want to harm others by my speech.

Usually we think in terms of telling lies or gossiping or revealing secrets. You know, I don't want to reveal your secrets because that's not fair to you. It's yours to reveal. And we kind of hide behind the factualness of speech, right? If I just tell what's true, then I'm safe. But of course, we all know that's not true. I might say something that I think is true, and it might not be. Or I might say something that's true that is harmful to you, to my friends, to my family, to my enemies.

So there's the pattern that we know about speech that is not harmful. Is it true? Is it useful? Does saying this make any difference? Or is it just flapping of lips? Or, I'm going to say this even though I know I can't influence you in any way, but I'm going to say it anyway. Or is it timely? This is the time to say it. In discussions with my husband, when we're both really agitated, I don't want to say anything really important. And I'll leave the room, come back, leave the room, come back until my energy level is at a point where what I say is not harmful. Now, is it timely? And the most important thing, is it kind?

Okay, so is it true? Is it useful? Is it timely? Is it kind?

But the first place we have to look is at what is our motivation for speech. Why are we saying it in the first place? To enlighten, you know, to explain, to satisfy curiosity, to punish, to convince. Very often it has to do with self-reflection. How am I seen? You know, sometimes I will catch myself in the middle of a discussion and realize I just want to be right. I'm right. I'm right. And I need you to know I'm right. And then I ask myself, how important is it to be right in this situation? Does it matter? Does it even matter tomorrow whether I am right about this thing?

And there's all this Sturm und Drang.¹ Primarily speech is about views. Views in me. I believe this, you believe that. And our views clash. And we both believe our views are true. And when we're fortunate, our views agree and align, and now this is what we call truth. Be aware of how your views are influencing your speech. Know when a view is just a view.

Know when a view has to do with belonging. There's nothing wrong with the wish to belong. But know when it's influencing what you're saying. When it's "we all think this." You know, my grandson last week is on a soccer team and he says, "You know, all the guys on my team are real jocks and they, you know, they just they all hang out together." And he loves soccer, really loves soccer. And he says, "You know, so the other day, I don't hang out with them at school because they just want to do jock things and I have other things I'm interested in." So a guy came up to me and he said, "You know, nobody likes you." He says, "I just don't pay any attention to that." And I'm thinking, wow, that sounds really uncomfortable. "Nobody likes you because you're not hanging out with us, right? Us. You need to be part of us because you're on our team."

And so I worried about that because I thought, wow, this is going to be really hard on him. But as it turns out, he's a really good soccer player. And I went to his game last week and everything's great because he's a good soccer player. And now they don't care whether he is with us at other times as long as he's with us on the field. That sense of belonging can actually create a lot of stress in life.

Speech is also about managing emotions or the mismanagement of emotions. How do we do that? We all know people that feel difficult to us for one reason or another. It might be because we like helping people, so we're not comfortable around people that want us to tell them about us. We want them to lean on us. Or there are people who lean all the time and it's a burden and we don't want them to lean on us. And that's all taking place through communication and the speech and the way we talk and how we talk to them.

Or we're carrying on a conversation and we know how the sentence ends and so we finish it for them. Although we don't actually know what they want to say, and they feel run over because, you know, they have been run over. There is that part. They have been run over. I'm a finishing-someone's-sentence kind of person, so it's something that I have to watch for all the time. Or you're halfway through your sentence and somebody says, "Oh, I know what you're talking about. It's this and it's actually that." And to watch for that and to not be offended by someone else's speech habits and then have to defend yourself or leap in and say, "Oh, you're being wrong. You're right." All of the ways in which we communicate that don't have to do with things being my style, my way, my view. To keep in mind what's happening in the conversation is to hear the other person.

A large part of why speech is really about hearing and not speaking at all. What do I hear? What do I see? What's being reflected to me? You know, one of the most difficult things about these 7 a.m. talks is I don't get to see you out there and I don't know how my words are landing. I can't see any faces. I can't see if you are hearing what I'm saying. Am I saying something correctly? Am I saying something that makes sense?

Become someone who really watches how your words are landing. Become someone who listens to themselves and says, "How is my voice sounding? Does my voice sound harsh? Does my voice sound soft? Does my voice sound like it's full of revenge? Does it sound like it wants revenge? Is what I'm saying designed to seduce?" Not because seduction is bad, but because I need to be really clear about my own intentions. Am I trying to persuade you of something? Or am I trying to fool you? Am I trying to lure you? Or am I trying to entice you? What are my intentions?

And then how does that feel in my heart? Does that feel graceful and light? Do I feel safe with that? Can I trust my own voice? Can I trust my words? If I can trust my words, you can trust my words. If I can trust my words, you can trust my words.

Speech that does not harm includes speech to myself. Self-criticism can be very harmful. "You're so stupid. How could you have done that?" Ah, again with the critic. Let the critic go.

Is it true? Is it useful? Is it timely? Is it kind?

Practice, because this is it. This is all we have. But this is really wonderful. This being alive, this being alive in this moment. May you know joy in this moment. And may it arise out of your own practice of all of the precepts and know that you can trust.

Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day.