“We have to always keep our mind pure and gentle, good, keep our mind good and clean. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not commit improper sexual conduct. Do not be two-faced.” It’s like that, meaning you don’t go to this person and say, “Oh, that person’s saying something bad to you,” and you go to this person and say, “You know that one, she’s really terrible behind your back,” so that both of them fight with each other or do something harmful to each other, either face to face or behind each other’s backs. That’s two-faced, that’s right. In Âu Lạc (Vietnam) they say, “Don’t be double-tongued.” In English it’s “two-faced.”
“Do not tell lies. Do not over-exaggerate,” meaning to cause trouble for other people. Like this problem is only a little bit. Like this person only says, “Oh, she’s not very beautiful.” And you go and tell the other person, “You know what she said? She said she’s very ugly.”
Not beautiful and very ugly is different, even though it sounds similar, but it’s not. And then you make that person feel sad and her self-confidence reduced. And sometimes people do silly things if they’ve lost their confidence, self-esteem. They could even kill themselves, things like that. So whatever the teaching here, it’s correct, too. It’s good to be reminded that we keep our speech, mind and body pure, as much as possible. Not just to protect ourselves and elevate our spiritual levels, but also to help others to have peace. And not sad, not feeling inferior, or not doing bad things to themselves because of our bad speech.
This is good. It’s good to be reminded. Good teaching is never too much to listen to, never too often, correct? Yeah, OK. That’s good.
