Right Speech

In my statement on Right Speech for students, I add a dash of rhetoric and a smidgen of discourse community.

In The Fourth Mindfulness Training, Loving Speech and Deep Listening, Thich Nhat Hanh explores the concept of Right Speech, a Buddhist principle. In essence, Right Speech asks rhetors to reflect upon

1. The power of language and its inherent ability to both build and destroy,

2. The suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, 

3. The fact that words can foster either happiness or suffering, wholeness or incompleteness, hope or hopelessness, and

4. The deleterious effects of untruthful or purposefully misleading discourse.

Right Speech encourages rhetors to

1. Strive to cultivate loving speech and deep listening to bring joy, concord, and happiness to others by alleviating the suffering of others, even in searches for truth, 

2. Strive to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, hope, and wholeness; to avoid communicating that which they do not know to be certain (to avoid criticizing or condemning that of which they are not sure),

3. Strive for harmony and mutual understanding and avoid uttering hostile and divisive words, and

4. Strive to make all efforts to reconcile and resolve conflicts in interactions, however small.

When we communicate, we will employ the principles of Right Speech to avoid confrontation and trauma in our learning community. 

The Elements of Loving Speech

Criteria for Loving Speech

For more information, see

“Dharma Talk: Five Wonderful Precepts” by Thich Nhat Hanh, published in Mindfulness Bell.

“The Path of Happiness” from the Magnolia Grove Monastery.  

“Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter” by Barack Obama. 

Communication is Our Continuation @ UPenn