Four negative actions of speech
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THE FOUR NEGATIVE ACTIONS OF SPEECH
Lying
When one lies, one deceitfully twists things round and knowingly says something untrue, and the other person understands what one has said. This is not confined to speech: physical gestures can also be lies.
Sowing Discord
Sowing discord involves wanting to divide two people who get on well, saying things that trouble the other person, and his or her grasping what one means.
Harsh Speech
With harsh speech, one directly says things within someone’s hearing that affect him or her deeply — recounting that person’s faults, for example — and the person absorbs what one has said.
Worthless Chatter
Worthless chatter comprises negative speech other than the first three kinds. It includes flattery; singing and acting; conversation about war, business, love, and so forth; and conversation involving wrong philosophical views.
About these, the Treasury of Abhidharma has this to say:
Lies are words that pervert the truth
And whose meaning is actually understood.
Divisive speech is that spoken with a poisoned mind,
Intent on splitting other people.
Harsh words are those one does not like to hear.
All speech influenced by afflictive emotions is worthless chatter.
THE Three negative actions of mind
Covetousness
Covetousness involves a deep-seated wish and desire to make someone else’s house, property, entourage, servants, and suchlike one’s own.
Harmful Intent
Harmful intent is a deep-rooted wish to harm another person and cause them pain.
Wrong Views
Wrong views involve holding the firm belief that there is no truth in the law regarding actions and their effects, that there are no previous and future lives, that the Three Jewels do not exist, and so on.
This is stated in the Treasury of Abhidharma as follows:
Covetousness is perverse attachment to others’ property.
Malice is hatred of sentient beings.
The view that there is no virtue
And no evil is wrong view.
These ten have been described here in terms of the complete course of the action, but you should also definitely avoid any acts similar to the ten negative actions, for example, killing unintentionally, by mistake. As it is said,
With attachment, aversion, and bewilderment—
Actions thus engendered are negative.
In particular, criticism of anything connected with the Dharma — the sublime doctrine, the spiritual friend who teaches it, and so forth — is said to be related to wrong view and has immeasurably negative consequences, as stated in the Transcendent Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses: Subhuti, those who accumulate actions that deprive them of the Dharma fall headlong, to be reborn in the lower realms. They suffer in the great hell where beings’ torments are unsurpassed.
And in the Sutra of the Miracle of Decisive Pacification we read:
For many, many kalpas too,
One’s body — five hundred leagues in size,
And on that body five hundred heads,
And in those heads, in every one,
No fewer than five hundred tongues,
And on each tongue a giant plow
With full five hundred shares, no less,
Burning their blazing furrows there—
All this because of evil deeds, of being critical.
- Dudjom Rinpoche - A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom - Shambhala Publications