The Dangers of Gossip and Slander - Proceed with Caution

In order to attain Enlightenment, an individual would need to eliminate gossip and slander from their life practice.

As long as one is gossiping and slandering, the mind is still polluted with craving, anger, and ignorance (unknowing of true reality), which are described as The Three Poisons, The Three Unwholesome Roots, or The Three Fires and will lack the ability to experience Enlightenment.

As part of The Eight Fold Path, The Path to Enlightenment, The Buddha taught as part of Right Speech to eliminate gossip and slander in order to move the mind towards Enlightenment.

But why?

Let me help you understand…

1.) Choosing to Gossip and Slander: If one is choosing to gossip and slander, the mind has craving, anger, and ignorance (unknowing of true reality). These poisonous states of mind hinder one from experiencing the peace, calm, serenity, contentedness and joy of the Enlightened mind.

If you are choosing to gossip and slander, this means that the mind “wants” something specific (i.e. craving/desire/attachment), it has anger/hatred/ill will towards others, and this is due to the mind’s ignorance (unknowing of true reality) of The Natural Laws of Existence (i.e. The Natural Law of Kamma) and not being able to practice them in a way that would lead to your own Enlightenment. The mind is polluted and struggling in the world and will experience unwholesome results (i.e. unwholesome Kamma).

If you are choosing to gossip and slander, that means you are putting harm into the world, thus, harm will come to you due to The Natural Law of Kamma. As you choose to gossip and slander others, these harms will come back to you in multiple ways.

• It is only a matter of time before people will gossip and slander you.

• Hearing the gossip and slander, and knowing who it has come from, individuals might cause you bodily harm, injury, or death.

• You damage your own reputation through others understanding that you are choosing to speak in unwise, unwholesome, and harmful ways.

• You will find it difficult to maintain personal and professional relationships because people will not be interested in associating with individuals who are gossiping and slandering, knowing that it is only a matter of time before you do the same to them.

• The mind will be muddled and cluttered with negative content of others degrading your ability to have focus, concentration, clarity of mind, and a deep memory to benefit you in life.

• People will have a lack of trust and respect for you as they know that you gossip and slander, thus, hindering your ability to be successful in life.

• The mind will be judgmental of others and themselves, retaining its “conceit”, thus, one might find they have negative self-talk that degrades the way they view themselves and others hindering the mind from practicing loving-kindness and compassion with “all beings”.

These are just a handful of the challenges and difficulties one will experience when they choose to gossip and slander others, thus, it would be wise to never gossip and slander. If you have done this in the past, you can train your mind to eliminate this destructive conduct so that you are no longer choosing to gossip and slander helping you get closer to Enlightenment.

The Eight Fold Path will guide you in being able to train the mind to accomplish this goal. It is important to learn, reflect, and practice The Eight Fold Path to gradually develop your life practice and eliminate gossip/slander.

2.) Listening to Gossip and Slander: If you only listen to gossip and slander, this is still destructive to your own mind. You are taking in negative content that negatively effects the mind. Gossip and slander is most often untrue, thus, the mind will be forming perceptions and making decisions based on untruths leading to unwholesome results (i.e unwholesome Kamma).

Perceptions: a belief or opinion based on how things seem.

Listening to gossip and slander means that people around you will understand that you are open to receiving their unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech. This means, that they will continue to come to you with gossip and slander.

Water flows in the path of least resistance. The same is true about unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech to include gossip and slander. People will know your mind is open to gossip and slander and they will seek you out for a continuous bombardment of negative, unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech putting yourself in a continuous position of destruction and erosion of the quality of your mind.

If you are listening to gossip and slander, that means you are accepting and receiving harmful speech from the world, thus, harm will come to you due to The Natural Law of Kamma. As you choose to listen to gossip and slander, these harms will be experienced.

• It is only a matter of time before people will gossip and slander you.

• The mind will continue to take in negative content about others and form a negative view of others further rooting anger/hatred/ill will into the mind hindering it from experiencing liberation, freedom from strong feelings, peace, and Enlightenment.

• You damage your own reputation through others understanding that you are choosing to listen to unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech of others.

• You will find it difficult to maintain personal and professional relationships because people will not be interested in associating with individuals who are listening to gossip and slander, knowing that an individual circulates in unwise and unwholesome relationships.

• The mind will be muddled and cluttered with negative content of others degrading your ability to have focus, concentration, clarity of mind, and a deep memory to benefit you in life.

• People will have a lack of trust and respect for you as they know that you are a listener of gossip and slander, thus, hindering your ability to be successful in life.

3.) Telling Others Who Is Gossiping and Slandering Them: If you listen to gossip and slander and then carry that forward as a messenger to others, informing them of the gossip and slander you are listening to, you are now choosing to gossip and slander. People oftentimes shoot a messenger.

While you are putting yourself in the position of being a messenger, the individual who you are sharing this with is most likely going to get angered, frustrated, irritated, annoyed, etc. and potentially blame you for their painful feelings. You are going to be viewed as a “trouble maker” as you are putting yourself in a position of spreading the gossip and slander through gossiping and slandering.

While you may think that telling others who is gossiping and slandering them and what is being said as helping, what is truly happening is that you are helping to spread the gossip and slander through gossip and slander, creating opportunity for continued challenges and difficulties in relationships. You are ensuring that the problems only continue rather than allowing the gossip and slander to be buried and to die.

If you are sharing gossip and slander around your community thinking this is going to improve things, you are essentially throwing garbage around your community hoping that it will become more clean.

This is an unwise decision that would lead to unwholesome results (i.e. unwholesome Kamma).

If you are spreading gossip and slander, that means you are putting harm into the world, thus, harm will come to you due to The Natural Law of Kamma. As you choose to spread gossip and slander, these harms will come back to you in multiple ways.

• It is only a matter of time before people will gossip and slander you.

• Hearing the gossip and slander, and knowing who it has come from, individuals might cause you bodily harm, injury, or death.

• You damage your own reputation through others understanding that you are choosing to speak in unwise, unwholesome, and harmful ways.

• You will find it difficult to maintain personal and professional relationships because people will not be interested in associating with individuals who are gossiping and slandering, knowing that it is only a matter of time before you do the same to them.

• People will have a lack of trust and respect for you as they know that you gossip and slander, thus, hindering your ability to be successful in life.

• The mind will be muddled and cluttered with negative content of others degrading your ability to have focus, concentration, clarity of mind, and a deep memory to benefit you in life.

• The mind will be judgmental of others and themselves, retaining its “conceit”, thus, one might find they have negative self-talk that degrades the way they view themselves and others hindering the mind from practicing loving-kindness and compassion with “all beings”.

4.) Hearing Gossip and Slander: While it is wise to remove yourself from a situation where people are gossiping and slandering, thus, individuals will come to understand that you are not a receiver of unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech, it is not possible to control others. Therefore, as you are making this transition away from gossip and slander, people might come to you and start gossiping and slandering others without you being able to readily and easily move away. Therefore, you might hear some gossip and slander for a period of time until you are determined, dedicated, and diligent enough that those around you understand you are not an outlet for their unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech to include, gossip and slander.

Upon hearing gossip and slander it is important to do the following:

A.) Do not acknowledge or confirm the gossip and slander. Do not give any indication that the gossip or slander is welcomed, appreciated, or well received. There is no need to be harsh or hostile, just ensure there is no indication from you that the gossip and slander is well received.

B.) Take action to move away from the speaker by excusing yourself from the conversation and situation. Over time, people will come to know that you do not stay and listen to gossip and slander and they will be less and less likely to seek you out for their gossip and slander. This will take time and those individuals will most likely gossip and slander about your new choices. This is the results of your decisions of having existed in conversations, situations, and relationships with repeated gossip and slander. But, this is the only way to extinguish the unwholesome results of your decisions and you will need to experience the results of your past decisions that were unwise (i.e. old unwholesome Kamma).

You will need to move away and distance yourself from the gossip and slander, otherwise, it is only going to continue with significant results impacting your life. If others choose to gossip and slander you, be unaffected and choose to move forward in life understanding you need to extinguish the unwise decisions that have been leading to the unwholesome results you are experiencing and this may include, moving on from old relationships forming new and healthier relationships where gossip and slander does not exist. If you are clinging to relationships, this can be challenging. But, you will need to train the mind to “let go” and “move on” from these relationships, otherwise, you will be “stuck” in continuous harmful experiences producing unwholesome results.

C.) If you heard something from others that can negatively affect your relationships with people, it is possible to ask questions of others to inquire whether what you heard is true or false without exposing who you heard it from or that it is gossip/slander that you have been exposed to. You can skillfully ask questions of an individual that you heard the gossip and slander about, to understand what is true or false.

If needed and as another option, you can completely ignore the gossip/slander entirely, not allowing it to affect your personal and professional relationships which would be very wise. Put it out of the mind not allowing it to settle into the mind. But, if you have retained the gossip and slander and need a conversation to clarify what you understand, you could ask skillful questions to the individual who was gossiped/slandered rather than allow the mind to cling to its perceptions. You can discover the truth through asking questions and pursue understanding so that you are not clinging to perceptions, thus, eroding and destroying the quality of your mind.

Perceptions: a belief or opinion based on how things seem.

In effect, view gossip and slander as unwise, unwholesome, and untrue as the individual who is gossiping and slandering has destructive goals with ill will and is attempting to damage relationships. It would be unwise to associate with an individual who is looking to damage relationships as you will eventually find yourself on the receiving end of their efforts to separate people and damage reputations.

An Enlightened being would be interested in bringing people together, not creating division and separation. Enlightened beings are interested in harmony not division.

Who you choose to associate with as friends and colleagues has a direct effect on your ability to function in the world through wise decisions leading to wholesome results. If you continue to gossip/slander, listen to gossip/slander, spread gossip/slander, or associate with people who gossip/slander, you will experience continued struggles and difficulties in life as you are negatively impacted by this unwise, unwholesome, and harmful speech.

If you choose to swim in a dirty pool, you are going to get filthy while regretting your decision to not find a pool that has clean water. So empty the dirty pool and fill it up with clean water then, you will be able to enjoy a refreshing swim.