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Right speech and right humor?
I consider myself a pretty humorous person. I do use a lot of exaggeration and sarcasm in my humor. I'm wondering if I should work on "fixing" my humor. Your thoughts?Right Speech
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
As my teacher once said, "If you can't control your mouth, there's no way you can hope to control your mind.' This is why right speech is so important in day-to-day practice.
For many of us, the most difficult part of practicing right speech lies in how we express our sense of humor. Especially here in America, we're used to getting laughs with exaggeration, sarcasm, group stereotypes, and pure silliness — all classic examples of wrong speech. If people get used to these sorts of careless humor, they stop listening carefully to what we say. In this way, we cheapen our own discourse. Actually, there's enough irony in the state of the world that we don't need to exaggerate or be sarcastic. The greatest humorists are the ones who simply make us look directly at the way things are.
Expressing our humor in ways that are truthful, useful, and wise may require thought and effort, but when we master this sort of wit we find that the effort is well spent. We've sharpened our own minds and have improved our verbal environment. In this way, even our jokes become part of our practice: an opportunity to develop positive qualities of mind and to offer something of intelligent value to the people around us.
So pay close attention to what you say — and to why you say it. When you do, you'll discover that an open mouth doesn't have to be a mistake.
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Comments
Me too. I think I am getting better though, gradually.
Us kiwis and our aussie neighbours have a real sarcasic sense of humour at times and unfortunatly I have used it on people of other nationalities who have been offended by what I and many of my fellow countrymen would have thought was real funny.I just stopped doing it in the end.Even if no offense was meant,I felt real bad when it was taken.Racist jokes in my opinion are not funny at all,or baby jokes or.....the list goes on and on and.............................
"(that was a joke)".
British sense of humour is different to that of our good friends across the pond, and the written humorous word isn't always easy to understand as such, if some readers are not on the same wavelength.
(By the way......the passage in brackets, in the first paragraph....? - was a joke.)
Many brackets there ... guess that is why it communicates clearly to me -lol
My thoughts are that if your humor is causing you to wonder if it is appropriate or not, there is probably something that if changed would provide you with greater peace.
Yesterday I had a moment when I thought I might have blown it with a 'joke'. I was on my volunteer shift at the homeless day shelter, where a lot of the folks joke around, but it is easy to offend someone you don't know (esp. if they have a mental illness/paranoia). Anyway, I saw Glen, who for a long time we had been saying "boy, I wish someone could get him in to the showers..." I was pretty sure that Glen can take a joke, so I said - "Hey Glen - you're all clean!" and then someone I'd never seen before took me to task. Said that what I'd said was offensive. I hoped that I hadn't blown it, so I said to Glen that I was just teasing him, and he reassured me - "aw, don't pay any attention to that guy" and somebody else said "some people just can't take a joke".
So I guess what I'm saying is - know your audience. In my case, I knew Glen well enough that I took the risk of making my comment.
Fret not, my esteemed moderatress (?), for I, a Yank (well, actually a Southerner) have the entire scripts of many a Monty Python skit, song, and film committed firmly to memory. I even know which way to look when I step off a curb on your fair isle. I know what a gap is (and when to mind it), and unlike the vast majority of my countrymen, I happen to like beer (real ale to be more precise) served at the *proper* temperature.
If you could just get over your consistent misspellings (tyre, humour), and grammatical errors - "I'm going to hospital in future". NO!! "I'm going to THE hospital (or A hospital) in THE future. Do we have to teach you guys everything?
As a fellow Brit, and not to turn this into another "war against the colonies"... I hasten to point out... it was we who had the spelling in the first place... you somewhat copied the language from us... ergo... you now spell it wrong...
And I happen to come from Germanic stock, so I believe it was WE who taught YOU to speak
PS: Besides, we outnumber youse guys by a fair margin!
Humour can be a useful teaching method, but it needs to be used carefully. IMO, if we use sarcasm it should be done in such a way that the person on the end of it is included in the joke and not to generate laughter at their expense.
here in America, we're used to getting laughs with exaggeration, sarcasm, group stereotypes, and pure silliness — all classic examples of wrong speech. If people get used to these sorts of careless humor, they stop listening carefully to what we say.
Does the Buddha actually list the above items as "wrong speech." If so, I would like to read it.
For now I think Guy C is correct.
Oh man do I have a lot of thoughts on this topic!
I found that growing up in the US, I am very sarcastic. Sarcasm, self-deprication, irony- these are all important in a lot of American and British conversations. Recently I was living in cultures where this was not the case, and I found it really hard to communicate with people who were so straight-forward all the time. I felt like they bragged a lot where we would be self-deprecating. Also they said sincere things a lot where we would keep a distance or crack a joke. Someone would just walk up and say, "Hi. I like you. Want to be friends?" and they'd mean it and this is how people there made friends. Can you imagine doing that in the US without people thinking you are weird?
We have to separate humor from sarcasm since people all over the world have humor but what we have in the US and in the UK is sarcastic humor which does not translate everywhere. But I LOVE sarcastic humor and I feel very comfortable in it. Still, one thing I noticed was that when I was not allowed to fall back on making sarcastic comments or having ironic conversations or cracking self-deprecating jokes, I found it easier to be kind and open to other people. But then I started thinking about the fact that even in cultures where people are not sarcastic, in which they are serious and earnest and supportive in speech- well there are still mean people in those cultures.
So what I concluded from all of this is that the cultural forms of joking around (saracasm or otherwise) are just fine. What is the problem is when you fall into a pattern of treating people in a certain way or talking in a certain way that maybe closes you off from other people. We have defensive patterns in our interactions with other so that we don't get hurt or seem vulnerable or foolish or needy or whatever. What is important is breaking these HABITS and being mindful of how we talk and interact with others.
What I mean is that the sarcasm itself isn't the problem. The problem is when you fall into a habit of using it for the wrong reasons- either to guard yourself or to tease someone else. I don't think you need to give up the sarcasm altogether, but it might do some good to be mindful of how/when/why you use it.
I suppose you could include joking in this. But if this were so, then the moderators on all of these forums are failing to end some of the fun silliness I see here.
What would the world be like without humor? I agree that I don't care for sarcasm, racist jokes, etc. Jokes that are on the person, often teasing is hostility in disguise. And I know that some of my own silliness is, well, just stupid silliness, so I am trying to refrain from it on these forums.
Idle talk can be something like politics or talking about gardening. Anything that is not talking about Buddhism could be considered idle talk, would it not be? I would be more concerned with gossiping. How do we know what the Buddha meant? Did the Buddha really say, That lacks purpose of depth? What purpose, what type of depth?