Words have power to hurt, haunt

April 13, 2011
A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
PACIFIC DAILY NEWS

As you read this column today, Buddhists are celebrating the start of a new year, Year 2555 of the Buddhist Era. I wish each the blessings of a Happy Buddhist New Year.

As one who frequently writes about the importance of informed, critical thinking, I am pleased at the opportunity this reminder of Buddha offers to acknowledge Buddha's teaching that thought makes man, and with his thoughts man makes the world: "We are what we think."

Great teaching

An action is an outcome of thoughts and dreams, which are conveyed through words, written or spoken. The words we use are revealing of who and what we are, and even of the values we hold. A Khmer saying goes, "Samdei sar jiat," or "Words reveal a man's worth."

A Khmer scholar asked recently in his writing if Khmer Buddhist beliefs are only "skin deep." He appealed for "soul searching." Officially 96.4 percent Buddhist and 90 percent ethnic Khmer, Cambodians, like their Southeast Asian Buddhist neighbors, begin a three-day celebration of the Khmer New Year of the Rabbit on April 13.

You don't have to be Buddhist to appreciate the truth of the sacred teaching 2,500 years ago of Gautama Buddha, a critical thinker and activist: "Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill."

Susan Smalley, a UCLA psychiatry professor, said: "Verbal insults, verbal abuse, and the power of words to affect your emotions and actions are well demonstrated in science. For example, scientists have found that just hearing sentences about elderly people led research subjects to walk more slowly. In other research, individuals read words of 'loving kindness' showed increases in self-compassion, improved mood, and reduced anxiety."

Buddha's words, connected with what the great Chinese teacher Confucius preached, "Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?" provide a powerful and invaluable lesson.

Smalley again: "I once read that a word is like a living organism, capable of growing, changing, spreading, and influencing the world in many ways, directly and indirectly through others. I never thought about a word being 'alive' but then I thought of words spoken 3,000 years ago, written down and passed through many generations, and they seem quite alive when read or spoken today, having lived 3,000 years. As I ponder the power of the word to incite and divide, to calm and connect, or to create and effect change, I am ever more cautious in what I say and how I listen to the words around me."

Permanent scars

It is said words are alive; if you cut them they bleed. Many world cultures tell us that a knife wound may heal, but a wound caused by words doesn't. It can last generations. Words can never be recalled. Written words are perpetual in public; spoken words haunt and hurt as long as man's memory.

The Japanese say, "The mouth is the door of evil" but "One kind word can warm three winter months."

Sometime ago, I wrote about the spiritual story, "A Bag of Nails." A father who wanted to teach a lesson to his very bad-tempered, young son, gave the boy a bag of nails and told him to hammer a nail into the wooden fence each time the son lost his temper.

On the first day alone, the angry boy hammered 37 nails into the fence. But over the next few weeks, the numbers decreased as he learned to control his bad temper, until one day, he didn't have to drive a nail into the fence at all.

He was happy. His father was happy. But now the father told the boy to go pull out one nail for each day the boy could hold his temper. It took many weeks before the boy pulled out the last nail. He learned that a bad temper could be controlled more easily than driving nails into the fence and pulling them out.

"You have done very well, my son," the father spoke happily as he walked his son to the fence, "but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave permanent scars just like these. And no matter how many times you say you're sorry, the wounds will still be there."

For this New Year, I find it worthwhile to repeat Stephen Ventura's basic training in "RESPECT": "R" recognizes a human being's inherent worth; "E" eliminates derogatory words and phrases; "S" speaks with, not at or about, people; "P" practices empathy through walking in others' shoes; "E" earns respect through respect-worthy behaviors; "C" considers others' feelings before speaking and behaving; and "T" treats every person with dignity and courtesy.

Humanity highway

In the words of civil rights icon, Martin Luther King, Jr., "There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."

Some years ago, I heard a presentation by New Zealander John Sax in Manila. Sax's topic: "Highway of Humanity." All people are travelers and free to choose to get off on one of the two exits.

On Sax's exit named "Great," travelers can stop at stations called love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, humility, honesty, truth, generosity, forgiveness and self-control. On exit "Miserable," there are stations called hate, misery, conflict, cruelty, meanness, unfaithfulness, brutality, pride, dishonesty, falsehood, misery, unforgiving and no self-control.

Sax asked, "Which exit and which stations do you choose?"

Happy Buddhist New Year!

A. Gaffar Peang-Meth, Ph.D., is retired from the University of Guam. Write him at

peangmeth@yahoo.com.