One of the most fascinating things about Buddhism is the
categoric and negative language.
The 8-fold path is simply a laundry list of Do’s and Don’ts.
Unfortunately, most websites and books list the Do’s, which is boring.
When Buddha would talk about Right Speech, he would give
a huge list of what does not count as Right Speech.
- Speech trying to hurt someone
- Speech trying to spread rumors
- Speech trying to distort perception
- Boastful speech
- Speech try tying to incite jealousy
- Arrogant speech
The advantage of using such language, is that ambiguity is
removed. It also makes it easy to preserve the meaning of
the original words. There is an implicit redundancy built into
the texts and sayings and it makes it easy to improvise.
This approach can be used additionally for “Process Manuals” like
checklists, so that information can be enriched with examples
of failure situations.