Idle Chatter

Andrew Collinson
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

In the Buddhism that has been taught to me by the mediation master Geshe Kelsang Gyatso there are ten what are known as non virtuous actions, which we must avoid if we are able to calm our mind and move towards Enlightenment.

All religions have a code of practice to live by and many are the same such as not to kill, steal, lie for example.

But there is one which is as far as I know unique to Buddhism and it is called idle chatter.

This is when we engage in conversation which is essentially meaningless, in the sense that people derive no benefit from what we say to them.

Conversations about other people and what we think of them,where we tell someone just about ourselves in order to look good never once giving the other person a chance to speak.

We speak from pride wanting to impress others with our knowledge.

We sometimes call this sort of conversation blah blah blah. We notice this straight away in others but never in ourselves.

Well in Buddhism we have the law of karma whereby everything we think do and say has an effect which can be positive neutral and negative.

As idle chatter is negative this gives rise to negative effects.In the future ( including future lives) the effect will be no one takes your seriously or just ignores what you say.

I think of eradicating this habit as the minimalism of speech. Just as we need to clear out the junk in our house so we need to clean out the junk in our speech.

So the next time you are at a party notice your speech or the speech of others.Is your speech of benefit to others, does it help them with their lives?

When you notice others speaking skillfully how does that make you feel.? I am sure your admiration for them will go up, so why not emulate them.?

Cut the idle chatter out of your life and have only pure speech.

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