There’s an old Buddhist folktale about a gentle elephant who belonged to a king. Everyone praised the elephant for its kind disposition. But gradually, the noble elephant began to become more aggressive and difficult. It wouldn’t allow anyone to work with it, and lashed out in anger and violence. The king was so worried about this change in the elephant that he sent one of his ministers to investigate.

The minister, an aspiring Buddha, discovered that every night, a group of burglars had been gathering near the elephant’s stall to plot their devious schemes. These men encouraged one another to act cruelly, and even murderously. The minister realized the elephant was under the influence of this hateful speech and acting accordingly. So he returned to the king with this advice: send wise sages, who speak harmoniously with one another, to talk together near the elephant’s stall every night. Over time, everyone was delighted to see the elephant return to its gentle nature.

What we say matters. It forms the condition of our hearts, and it influences the hearts of others. In other words, the words we use carry with them a kind of energy. An influencing energy, even.

I realize this sounds a little woo-woo, but if the quantum physicists are right, everything boils down to energy. Eastern mystics will tell you that sound is life’s primal energy. Words carry importance because they create sound, and in that sound, meaning. If you’re familiar with the use of mantras, you know it’s not just the words that matter. It’s the sounds you make as you say the words that also bring about transformation. Chanting a mantra (or a prayer) brings us back to the divine energy. When we speak it, we harmonize to it.

Theologian Matthew Fox explains the Aramaic word, dabhar, which means “word,” means something much closer to “creative divine energy.” The Abrahamic faiths claim God spoke the universe into being in this kind of poetic way, by using dabhar. For those of the Christian faith, the Gospel of John describes Jesus as the Word- a metaphor either way, of course, but it carries a new layer when we think about Jesus as divine creative energy.

Obviously, I’m no quantum physicist. But if the tiny bit I understand about creating energy fields in a vastly interconnected world is correct, then there’s got to be something to the idea that what we speak is also in some capacity what we create. I don’t mean this in a “manifest your perfect life” kind of way. I’m not on that train. What I do mean is that we cannot walk through the world speaking violence and find ourselves shocked when see the violence we speak in the world around us.

In other words, we cannot plot devious schemes by the listening ears of elephants and pretend it won’t harm them. This is not just folklore; it is wisdom waiting for us.

If you have a strained personal relationship in your life, harmful speech played a significant role in getting you there. And it will not heal until you change the energy in the words you choose. If you want to repair it, harmful speech will never be the way.

This holds true on the world’s stage, too. In systems and structures, whose voices do we raise up? And who do we ignore or shun? They matter. Those choices affect things. What leaders we elect and how they speak from their podiums matters. (In 2016, I told many people I thought it would break the Presidency in a visceral way, and this is exactly what I meant. Some things should not be spoken from that position. It’s a lot of creative energy to yield to someone. You can’t let someone speak like this from a position like that and not expect something in the system itself to break.)

Listen, I know this is a holiday week. You are busy planning what dishes to make and how to survive whatever family dynamic might greet you this year and this post is asking a lot by diving into this weird subterranean view of energy and words and social justice. But I cannot end this month of practicing Right Speech without trying, however incoherently, to explain how overwhelmed with conviction I felt when researching Right Speech that all of this is SO. VERY. IMPORTANT. to the actual lived reality of our world. I will never be smart enough to figure it all out, but I absolutely trust and believe that:

• lying breaks trust and without trust we cannot live together in peace
• slander breaks dignity and without dignity we cannot live together in wholeness
• harsh words break connection and without connection we cannot live together in love
• idle chatter keeps us asleep and unless we awaken our awareness, nothing will ever change

Some of you have shared that this has been a difficult step on the Path to practice. I agree. It has been humbling as I’ve paid attention to the energy I create each day with my words. None of us do this work perfectly. But we can keep trying.

And we begin by recognizing how powerfully important it is to do this work well. With our words, we create the world. We break it or heal it. Over and over again.

May our words bring healing. And may we nobly carry the responsibility we have to create life-giving energy in the world with the words we choose.

This post belongs to a series on walking the Eightfold Path. Want to read all the posts on Right Speech? Find them here.