Speech Is Powerful

The act of speaking is incredibly powerful. Problems in life mostly come from speech. But it won’t cause any problem if it is not inspired by greed, hatred or ignorance. Let’s think about this more closely. In the very beginning there was nothing. When there is speech, problems start to come and follow the one who has spoken. Speech can make people laugh or cry, be happy or suffer or give rise to any number of other feelings. For example, a girl is whispered to and what she hears causes her sorrow and she starts to cry. After a while, she is spoken to by another man; she becomes fresh and cheerful again. This is all due to the power of speech.

To help our understanding, I would like to tell you a Chinese story which I once read myself and which explained this well. It will be good to share this with you all. Here is the story:

There once lived a well-known teacher who had many students. One day he talked to his students about his aim in life. He said, “Now I plan to serve the country as a senior nobleman”. His students told him, “That is the right thing for you to do, master. You are knowledgeable and wise. You can help the country. But to become a senior official, you need a lot of gold!”. The teacher said, “Yes absolutely. If I have a thousand pieces of gold, is it enough? What do you think?” The students replied, “Wow, that is a lot. Teacher, may we ask, if you have a lot of gold like that, will you share some with us?” He rejected this immediately, saying, “No, no I cannot share my gold with you, because as a nobleman I really need gold to secure my position.” When his students heard that, they were very disappointed and angry. So they all went away.

Do you see how powerful speech is? We can lose things which we don’t have in our hands just because of speech. Therefore, we must watch out when we are speaking. If we are careless, our own speech may return to harm us like the teacher in the story.