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Walking the Path
How, for instance, do we practice right speech? Right speech does not mean saying "the right thing." Ideas about the "right" thing usually come from conditioning. As a teacher, I field a lot of questions from students about different aspects of practice. Many are repetitive. I can easily fall into the habit of giving stock answers. If I give a stock answer, however, I am operating out of habituation, not presence. I am not really paying attention to the student, how he or she is asking the question, or how the question arises in the context of the student's practice. A stock answer is not the practice of right speech, even though the answer may be "right" in a technical sense.
To cultivate right speech, listen as you talk so that you hear, with your own ears, exactly what you say and how you say it.
To travel the eightfold path, we make the same effort in each of eight areas. In addition to bringing attention to how we speak, we bring attention to how we act and behave, to what we do for a living, to the way we direct our efforts in practice and in life, to how we practice mindfulness and cultivate attention, and to how we look at the world and how we think.
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The information on these pages is excerpted from Ken McLeod's book, Wake Up To Your Life.