​Gate 101: Unrestricted speech

Entry into the state of unrestricted speech is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we attain realization of the Dharma-eye.
入無礙辯是法明門、得法眼成就故。

First let’s look at what unrestricted speech means in this gate statement.  Then we need to understand “entry,” because there are some nuances there.  Next we’ll talk about the dharma eye -- what that is and why it’s important -- and finally we’ll intersect everything and see how it all connects.

Unrestricted speech sounds like just saying whatever we want at tops of our voices!  Is this about being completely free to express ourselves in whatever way we want?  What kind of restrictions are we talking about?

The kanji here means hindrance, obstruction or disturbance, so this isn’t about restricting what we say in order to follow precepts or some other guideline.  It’s not about censoring ourselves or controlling ourselves in that way.  The gate is pointing to being hindered by attachment to mistaken assumptions about the nature of reality, or our view being limited by our delusion and inabiliy to see the whole landscape of this moment.  We’re having a hard time carrying out Right Speech because of our ignorance.,  Whatever skill we may have in speaking or communicating, and whatever ability we may have to use our intellects, is being twisted because we’ve followed our misunderstandings about the universe right off the rails.

Unrestricted speech comes from the point of view of unobstructed wisdom or prajna.  It’s how we speak and teach when we act from a place of seeing clearly and deeply understanding impermanence, interdependence and the emptiness of the five skandhas.  This points us back to the way body, speech and mind are connected when it comes to karmic action.  First some thought arises in the mind, and of course, there’s a whole process about how that happens called the 12-fold chain of dependent origination.  (For more on that, see our Buddhist Essentials page.)  On the basis of that thought in the mind, we say something.  If the thought was wholesome, there’s at least some chance that what we say will be, too.  If not, we have a pretty good chance of saying something that breaks a precept or causes some kind of suffering.  When we think stuff and say stuff, we’re likely to take some action with the body that’s related to what we think and say, so clearly we need to pay attention to thinking and speaking before they lead to a big mistake.

That means that we can’t just monitor what we say or what we teach in isolation from the rest of our functioning and expect that everything will be OK.  Nothing arises without a cause, and suffering has roots that we can trace and understand, so we can’t engage in unrestricted speech without engaging in zazen, work, study and liturgy: in other words, practice in its entirety.

Entry into something sounds like there’s something we need to get or somewhere we need to go, and we have to be careful about getting caught up in the idea that there’s a fixed state that we need to reach in order for something to happen.  “Entering into” in this context is to drop off body and mind, to realize that there’s already no separation so there’s already no restriction or hindrance.  What’s keeping us from “entering into” is our five skandhas clinging to five skandhas.  If we can let go of the clinging, we easily “enter into.”

All this reminds me of the step in the hero’s journey called crossing the threshold.  The hero’s journey is a standard set of 17 plot points that make up the structure of most screenplays, novels or epic stories.  The fifth one is crossing the threshold, where the protagonist has finally accepted a challenge and stepped out of the ordinary world and into unknown territory in order to solve the problem.  In most cases there’s a threshold guardian, some kind of natural barrier or dangerous being, something that prevents the hero from just deciding to cross and then doing it.  In other words, there’s something scary about taking that step.

When it comes to our practice, we may think we really want to drop off body and mind and enter into this space of non-separation, but we also really want to hang onto an idea about who we are.  It can feel like annihilation to let go of clinging to these five skandhas.  Who am I if I let go of my self-concepts?  Do I disappear?  Do I lose my identity?  Do I become somebody else?  Is it like amnesia?  Will I die?  How do I act or know what to do if I don’t know who I am?  If I cross over and enter into this space of unrestricted speech, how do I know what to say?

We can be afraid of being sort of unmoored or disoriented.  Stopping our clinging to five skandhas can put us into a space we’re not used to being in, so we think it’s just a big cloud of confusion and unknown and the unfamiliar.  Actually, entering into in the context of this gate statement is understanding or realizing -- making real, making concrete -- our wisdom and compassion, so it’s not floating around in a fog.  We’re really stepping out of the fog of delusion and habituated thinking and into a space of clarity and reality.

The kind of speech that arises from this unhindered and unrestricted place has several names within our tradition.  We’ve talked about them before, but here's a quick review.  Back at Gate 6 saw that paying attention to the actions of the mouth headed off a group of evils: lying, spreading rumors, slander, engaging in idle talk, and  speaking in a way that causes problems between others.  This is the tradtional definition of right speech on the eightfold path.

At Gate 77 we talked about right speech and saw that on an everyday level, right speech doesn’t create suffering for ourselves or others.  At the absolute level, it’s letting go of words and concepts altogether.  Keeping this balance is how we keep the fourth precept about not speaking falsehood, seeing one reality from two sides and expressing two sides in one action.

We need to say things in order to function in the world as bodhisattvas; at same time, we know that words are limited and can’t express entirety of this moment.  Some of us in the sangha spent a long time recently  talking about the Shobogenzo Bodaisatta Shishobo, or Four Embracing Actions of the Bodhisattva, one of which is loving speech, and we’ll return to that in a minute.

The gate statement is saying that when our speech is not hindered by delusion and clinging and ignorance, that is itself a realization (making-real or manifestation) of the dharma eye.  (See Gate 100 for a review of the five eyes from the Diamond Sutra.)  When we use unrestricted speech we tap into the dharma eye, so that means our speech is a real concrete instance of carrying out our vow to liberate beings -- but how does that happen?

In the Shishobo, Dogen Zenji says:
Loving-speech means, first of all, to arouse compassionate mind when meeting with living beings, and to offer caring and loving words.  In general, we should not use any violent or harmful words.  . . . To speak with a mind that “compassionately cares for living beings as if they were our own babies” is loving-speech. 

It seems important that Dogen Zenji is saying we should speak with a mind that sees all beings as though they were our children.  This is a practice that starts before we open our mouths.  It starts with paying attention to our thoughts and perceptions.  Regardless of what we’re actually saying, what’s our attitude when we talk to people?  Can we really see the reality of interconnectedness and nonseparation and emptiness in that moment of that encounter?  Do we really feel the need to take care of that conversation as though we were taking care of our own children?

It’s easy to fall into social convention of asking how someone is, but do we really care?  Sometimes simply showing some interest in someone’s wellbeing makes a big difference.  I once read a Facebook post from someone whose partner was undergoing cancer treatment.  This person was dismayed that no one had reached out to her as someone who was also affected by the situation, and she said, just responding to a Facebook post doesn’t count!  She needed to actually talk to friends over coffee and to think about something besides managing the illness.  The easy, convenient thing is just to click on a heart emoji or a sad face and feel good because we’ve provided some acknowledgement and support, but that wasn’t a real case of loving speech because this person needed something else and no one asked what that might be.  This wasn’t someone I know well enough to get involved in that family’s situation, but it did make me realize that I needed to reach out to people I knew who were having health issues, and when I did, they were really appreciative.  It was a kick on the backside from the universe that I need to pay more attention.

This all means that we need to establish our practice and put in time on the cushion so we’re ready to meet the world and respond as skillful bodhisattvas with body, speech and mind, because if we’re not seeing all beings with the dharma eye, we can’t engage in unrestricted or loving speech.  

When people hear loving-speech directly their faces brighten and their minds become joyful. When people hear of a someone else’s loving-speech, they inscribe it in their hearts and souls. 

The power of unrestricted or loving speech to liberate beings goes beyond the one person you might be talking to at the moment.  If others happen to hear that loving speech, they benefit too, and if they talk about it to their friends, the merit goes even farther.  We never know where our words will end up across space and time.  A skillful comment might not take root until some time later, and then, OH! that’s what that was about!  OH!  now I know what to do with that!  We only have to think about how many times stories about dharma teachers are repeated.  They were just responding to informal questions or making some comments, and yet years later those are turning words for somebody.

Finally, Dogen Zenji says: We should know that loving-speech arises from a loving mind, and that the seed of a loving mind is compassionate heart. We should study how loving-speech has power to transform the world. It is not merely praising someone’s ability.

We can say nice things, and maybe hold ourselves back from saying something we’ll regret later, but are we actually encountering all things as our children, with the clear wisdom and compassion of prajna, or are we putting on an act because we think we’re “supposed to?”  Keeping ourselves from making mistakes is a good thing, but is it enough?  We can’t stop there; we actually have to shift from relying on deluded thinking to relying on the dharma eye, and this is something we can cultivate.  Dogen Zenji says that once we start paying attention to using loving speech, it becomes our usual way of being in the world.  He says we won’t even notice what’s happening, but if we practice, gradually our speech will become kinder and less self-involved over time.

Finally, he reminds us that this kind of speech is really, really important because it’s essential to resolving conflict with others and, we could also say, essential to the health of the network.  Conflict is some indication of three poisonous minds.  Someone somewhere is caught up in greed, anger or ignorance, and probably all three, and that’s the basis of suffering.  Thus in this samsaric world on fire, if we can’t do anything else to ratchet down unwholesome stuff that’s happening, we can at least engage in unrestricted speech.  That might not feel like much, but as we’ve seen, in order to engage in unrestricted speech we have to use the dharma eye, so there’s something powerful in back of this action.  It’s not just nice words.  We’re bringing our wisdom and compassion to that situation.

So far I’ve been talking about speech in a general way, but the underlying sense of the Sanskrit here is teaching, discussing, discoursing.  That’s speech being used in a particular way, being eloquent and using our rhetorical and intellectual skill, in this case to share the dharma.  The kanji points to the Sanskrit word nirdesha: instruction, explanation or advice.  For example, the Vimalakirti Sutra is sometimes called the Vimalakirti Nirdesa.  In early texts, when Buddha or a bodhisattva is explaining something, it’s called nirdesha.  This gate statement says that if we’re going to teach the dharma, or discuss the Buddha’s teachings, as bodhisattvas using the dharma eye, that teaching or discussion is going to come from a place of unrestrictedness.
  
You may know that this sort of dharma talk is not the only way in which Zen teachers present the dharma.  There is something called a teisho, literally presentation of the shout.  It's not a sermon or an academic lecture, and not about concepts or factual knowledge.  It’s a presentation of insight.  Traditionally these things happen during sesshin and they deal with a koan or sometimes something from a sutra.  Teisho has been described as insight returning to the source.  It’s a demonstration of direct experiential understanding behind the words and content.  The point is not to “teach” the koan but to show insight underneath the understanding of it.  You may not be familiar with this sort of talk because we don’t do that sort of sesshin teisho here.  There’s no talking during sesshin at all, and our practice is to let go of all thinking, including thinking about the dharma.  

Anyway, teisho as a direct presentation of the dharma doesn’t always make sense on the surface, particularly if the topic is a koan.  When listening to teisho, you don’t need to try to understand every word with your intellect.  Folks say they consider it another form of zazen, just sitting quietly and letting it wash over them and soak in, which makes me think that not only the speaker but also the listeners need to be unrestricted, listening without hindrance, being hijacked or jumping to conclusions about what’s being said. or deciding we like it or don’t like it or agree or disagree.  This is listening without greed, anger and ignorance or any other kind of obstruction.

Not only is the teacher directly presenting awakening or realization, the listener is directly receiving and participating in that awakening or realization.  Neither side is becoming attached to the words or to any kind of distraction.  They’re both just entering into the reality of this moment, in other words, unrestricted speech and unrestricted listening.  Because the teisho is supposed to be spontaneous and expressing something in THIS moment, there are probably no notes, and it might not be delivered in a structured way with full sentences and carefully constructed paragraphs.  It comes directly from what’s happening right now, not written out beforehand and rehearsed.

For new teachers, I suspect giving talks is one of scarier things they have to learn to do.  I was fortunate in that regard in two ways:  one is I’m highly verbal already, and the other is that I used to coach presenters and speakers for a living, so I already understood the skills and the process.  Even so, to get up in front of a group of practitioners and offer something useful to them is a challenge, especially when some of them have been in robes longer than you’ve been practicing!

Thus new teachers tend to completely script themselves and then read their notes to the audience, or they just do book reports:  I read this great book over the weekend and I want to share it with you today.  The author says . . .  Well, what do YOU say?  What are YOU bringing to this talk?  Beginners think they have nothing to add to the conversation.  Hmmmm.

If we can get past that point of ego and self-clinging, that’s where the juice is.  I love visiting college classes and just batting questions back and forth.  They ask interesting stuff and then I need to respond in that moment, drawing on all my study but also all my direct experience.

Every year when we do the shuso hossen and the shuso takes questions from the sangha, that’s the part that makes them nervous and keeps them up at night: no notes, no prep, just you and the question and everyone watching and listening.  They go straight for emptiness and the absolute in every answer because it’s an easy way to avoid the tough questions, and we tend to be nice and let them off the hook.  That experience is designed to make us get out of our own way as teachers and just let the dharma come out -- believe me, it’s in there!  When we open our mouths and get out of the way, something comes out 
(where did that come from?)  If you get out of the way, it’s way more fun then tying yourself up in knots trying to give an intellectual discourse.

Most of us here are laypeople and are never going to do a shuso hossen, and don’t consider ourselves dharma teachers, so why do we care about this unrestricted teisho thing?  Well, have you ever been presented with a question that puts you on the spot?  What do you think of your coworker’s performance on this project?  Do you know why I’ve called you into my office (or why I’ve pulled your car over?)  Daddy, is there really a Santa Claus?  A tooth fairy?  a God?  How about when your sister or your friend says:  Why me?  Why did this terrible thing happen to me?  I’m a good person, just doing my best to live.  What do you say?  Do you think you’re not called on to respond skillfully from a place of practice in this moment?  You are if you’re a bodhisattva, which we’ve all vowed to be.  Unrestricted speech partnered with the dharma eye is one of the most important tools we’ve got.

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Questions for reflection and discussion:

• How do you see the connection between causes and conditions and your practice of unrestricted speech?
• How do you practice with saying what's really needed in this moment as opposed to what you want to say?
  
• How do you experience letting go of clinging to the five skandhas?  Is it a scary unmooring from your sense of self, or a feeling of being liberated from the limitations of the small self?  Or something else?
  
• What do you do when you're put on the spot and have to say something?