Why The Buddhists and Aztecs Insist That Happiness Follows The Words You Say

What Crosses Your Lips Pre-Frames Your Mind

The noted psychologist, Robert Cialdini, relates a story that changed his mind about the impact of small words. He was invited to give a talk at SSM Health, a non-profit in the medical industry renowned for its stratospheric performance. Yet he was told that in his presentation he would have to replace specific words.

• Instead of “bullet points” say “talking points.”
• Instead of “attacking a problem” say “approaching a problem.”
• Instead of “beat the competition” say “outdistance the competition.”

Befuddled, Cialdini asked: why? Why would such small words matter?

The answer, he discovered, is that what crosses your lips pre-frames your mind. And if your thoughts lead to actions, then words inconsistent with your goals will lead to actions inconsistent with your goals.

After contact with the group and researching the topic himself, Cialdini states his new view bluntly:

I’m a convert now. My response to SSM’s strict language policy transformed from “Geez, this is silly” to “Geez, this is smart” (102).

In SSM Health’s case, their goal is to improve peoples’ lives through healing. Violent language is inconsistent with that goal. So they eliminated it, or at least as much of it as they could.

There is scientific support for their approach too, so it wasn’t just guesswork. But what SSM Health and Cialdini have rediscovered is, in fact, a bedrock practice for Buddhist and Aztec philosophy called Right Speech. Their new insights are but old wisdom decanted into new glassware.

The old wisdom was also more general. Right Speech for Buddhist and Aztec philosophy proves crucial not just for an organization’s success, but especially for living a good life — for “happiness” in colloquial English.

Practically, I want to show you how to use Right Speech as the Buddhists and Aztecs understood it. Honestly, it’s the closest thing to a happiness hack that I know.

Philosophically, I’m going to show you that the ethical focus of these non-Western traditions is intuitively plausible, even though it’s been virtually ignored since Plato’s Republic.

Three notes of context will prepare the way. First, an Aztec philosophical tradition really exists. I’m part of a cohort of scholars doing work to recover their philosophy. Second, there are still many misconceptions about their culture because the history that has been popularized about the Aztecs was written by the self-designated “conquistadors.” I’m asking you to set those views aside and to keep an open mind for what follows. Third, the Buddhist tradition is vast. So I’ll be drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh’s Zen Buddhism, especially The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. My reasons are simple, he’s quotable, scholarly, and widely available in English.

Having noted those points of context, let’s start with the general idea.

Thinking Well by Speaking Well

Buddhist and Aztec philosophy are, in several ways opposed, since they have different views on what (ultimately) makes for a happy life. As a result, they also tend to emphasize different approaches to living well.

What unites them is their focus on what happens just before a topic emerges into your awareness. Whether you are trying to achieve liberation from suffering (Buddhism) or a rooted existence (Aztec philosophy), they insist that you can facilitate your efforts by speaking rightly.

Let’s start with the Aztec approach to Right Speech.

In volume six of the Florentine Codex, you can find a series of speeches by elders to younger members called the Discourses of the Elders. In one of them, a mother tells her daughter to speak in such a way as to preserve her traditional words of wisdom “in the chambers of your heart” (FC 6.19, 99). Right Speech for the Aztecs, then, is a practice meant to conserve what is good and upstanding about you at your core. Without a sense of what is good in life, you cannot distinguish Right Speech from drivel.

In another discourse, a few chapters later, a father advises his son on how to be prudent in public conduct. A key practice is Right Speech. This includes remaining humble in his demeanor and being true with others. Moreover, he advises that

you are to speak slowly and deliberately. … [And] guard, take care of your ears, of what you hear. Do not gossip (FC 6.22, 122).

In short, Aztec Right Speech, intended to protect and promote what is good about your personality, has four characteristics: (1) speak thoughtfully, (2) speak truly, (3) speak humbly, and (4) don’t gossip.

Buddhist Right Speech, in contrast, is part of the eightfold path to living well. Like the Aztec practice, its aim is to preserve what is good in each of us, and so presupposes Right Views about the world.

Unlike the Aztec tradition, it has five central characteristics — at least as Nhat Hanh develops the practice. The four traditional components involve:

[1] Speaking truthfully…. [2] Not speaking with a forked tongue….[3] Not speaking cruelly…. [4] Not exaggerating or embellishing (85).

In addition to these traditional four points, Nhat Hanh adds that

deep listening is at the foundation of Right Speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice Right Speech (86).

One might question whether Nhat Hanh is true to the Buddhist doctrine in adding this fifth point, but it at least appears to be conceptually implied by the others. After all, what is the use of speech if you cannot understand the context of your discussion?

Reflecting on both traditions, you’ll notice that they offer surprisingly similar views about what makes for Right Speech. In fact, you might combine their lists into just three main points:

1. Be truthful, avoiding even exaggerating.
2. Don’t gossip or cut others down.
3. Speak thoughtfully by listening honestly.

Importantly, neither tradition is interested in being censorious. For both, the concern is to achieve alignment between your goals and your thoughts. That’s why they’re not focused on politically correct topics, or blasphemy, or “bad words.”

Moreover, the alignment they seek to promote is conditional. Both traditions urge that if you want to live this way, then you should do these things, say these words. Neither is urging something along the lines of thou shalt not speak these words!

With this synthesized view in mind, let’s explore two ways you can practice this in daily life.

Practice 1: Kinder Words

Nhat Hanh insists that the real basis for Right Speech turns on listening not saying, for it is listening that does the job of connecting us. When we are not heard, we feel left out, alone, isolated.

Metaphorically, Nhat Hanh suggests, this feeling of isolation lights the fuse to a bomb within us that may eventually explode as anger and antisocial behavior. That is why those who communicate well listen well. He writes:

The Bodhisattva … has the quality of listening deeply, without judging or reacting. When we listen with our whole being, we can defuse a lot of bombs (87).

This kind of listening is hard because we often listen to identify whether the speaker is saying something with which we agree. We are listening for our interests, not theirs. And if they do say something that we disagree with, we rush to judgment.

A first practice of Right Speech is thus to work towards kinder words by making them thoughtful words — ones that respond to the people in front of us as they are.

Now I realize that the practice might sound quaint, given how divisive our society presently is and how basic truths go unacknowledged. But for all that, you shouldn’t underestimate the power of listening to others and responding thoughtfully.

In some sense, the heart of a therapist’s job is just to listen well. And no small amount of their training consists in learning how not to respond to others with judgment. The profession knows what Buddhism has always proclaimed, healing begins after judgment, not with it.

To practice this, say kinder words not by complimenting people, but by responding to what they mean. To validate them without agreeing, just repeat back the last few words of their statement. Then respond to them as a person. For example:

Other Person: “… is the best leader ever. Of course they stole the election.”

You: “They stole the election?”

Other Person: “Yes they did! Didn’t you hear about the ballots being sent to a German server before being counted?

You: “Before being counted?”

Other Person: “Yes, well, they were sent to the German server, so they could have been changed. And then they were sent back to Pennsylvania.”

Notice that in each case the person is being validated, by having their words repeated back to them, without having the content of their statement supported. The bolded portions are just the last few words of the previous statement. This is one way to handle especially difficult conversations.

Of course, our political climate is likely to make you skeptical. If you’re still not convinced that kinder words, born from deep listening can heal your relationships with others, consider the work of Daryl Davis. He is a black man, who convinced more than 200 KKK members to leave just by listening to them. It took years, but he even “convinced” a Grand Wizard to leave by hearing him out.

With difficult cases, remember it takes time. But kind words, born from deep listening, have the force of the ocean’s water on rocks. Though gentle, it does ultimately prevail.

Even granted these points, however, if your goal is both to help others and to set your own mind straight, then your words must also be true ones.

Practice 2: Truer Words

The role of a philosopher among the Aztecs looks to have involved some counseling, a bit as Socrates used to do among the ancient Greeks. In a description of the philosopher in volume 10 of the Florentine Codex, you’ll read the following.

Like a watchful physician, the good philosopher is … a counselor and a coach, fostering sound judgment in others.

Like a physician … she is confided in, trusted, quite affable, satisfying one’s heart, making one content (FC 10.8, 29).

The Aztecs had a metaphorical way of referring to a human’s personality. They called it your face and heart — your judgment and desires in less metaphorical language. The activity of the philosopher is to help others align these aspects through a series of practices. One of those was Right Speech.

This is often harder than we expect because even exaggerations are to be avoided if possible. And if we’re honest, most exaggeration stems from a bid to impress others. This, in turn, stems from our own inability to address the sources of our shame.

Speaking the truth exposes you to vulnerability, but, as Stoic philosophers also argued, that is the only road to happiness. I’ll give you a story, which, to be consistent, has to come from my own life.

When I shipped off to graduate school in Boston, Massachusetts I quickly learned that I was the kid with no pedigree. For most of my life as a child, I lived in Caldwell, Idaho traveling mostly to visit family in Mexico.

My problem was that the state of Idaho is so obscure, that I usually have to give Americans with advanced degrees a geography lesson so they understand the general section of the United States that it’s in (the Pacific Northwest near Oregon and Washington). My “hometown” is about 30 minutes outside the state capital, Boise, by car.

Instead of explaining all that, I would shortcut the mess and just say that I was last from the Dallas-Fortworth area in Texas. It turns out that being labeled a “hick” from Texas is better than being a “hick” from absolutely nowhere.

That’s not a lie, but it’s also rather misleading. And there were costs to this strategy.

The Aztecs and Buddhists weren’t socially incompetent and, unlike some “Western” philosophers who insist you should never lie, they realized that we don’t speak only to communicate the truth. So they understood that we use white lies to connect with each other and be supportive. To use the cliched example, suppose your friend or partner asks:

Do these pants make me look fat?

Often, what they want is reassurance. If you only say “yes,” then you are not practicing Right Speech. You are missing the point of language, which is to communicate, and your words are unkind (see the practice above).

On the other hand, you can usually be supportive without such untruths with just a bit more thoughtfulness. And that point suggests that you might be using the lies as a way to avoid being thoughtful, to avoid being supportive. That is also not Right Speech.

In my own case, the costs emerged when people tried to get to know me better. There would always be this weird moment when they would learn of my history, and react confusedly. “I thought you were from Texas” they would say. So while the approach smoothed over relationships initially, I had actually set up an impediment to the relationships I wanted to build.

To summarize, even exaggeration prevents a person from achieving the harmonious alignment with reality that allows for tranquility and happiness.

You can practice this, then, by simply trying to exaggerate less. Try telling the truth more often. Take the time to be thoughtful without the white lie. Small steps, if regular, will be enough to live well.

Living Well by Speaking Well

My own interest in Right Speech emerged from an initial confusion. Ethical philosophy in the “West” has virtually ignored what transpires before your conscious awareness. For example, Plato’s focus in his Republic turns on a case where a thirsty man struggles to resist drinking dirty water (439b). Notably, such weakness of will is an all-too-conscious struggle.

And if your focus is only on what happens after a thought emerges into consciousness, then the topic of Right Speech quickly reduces to just speaking the truth.

Buddhist and Aztec philosophy, in contrast, care deeply about those moments just before conscious awareness. As a result, they hold that what you say can dramatically affect your thoughts and actions. Right speech, on their view, is thus a royal throughway to self-mastery and happiness.

The truth still matters for them. But even when practicing truer speech, the goal is to ensure that your consciousness stays focused on reality, both for your own benefit and for others. Moreover, Right Speech, when it is kind speech, focuses on fostering connection — something that is little emphasized in the “West” as a core ethical activity.

I suspect that “Western” philosophers didn’t neglect this topic so much as opted against it for theoretical reasons. Implied, in an ethics focused on pre-conscious awareness, is a view on human agency that must be something other than deliberative agency. You can’t deliberate on what you’re not aware of after all. But maybe there are other views of agency that are defensible?

At the very least, I hope to have persuaded you of my philosophical point, namely that focusing on what is just beyond your conscious awareness can help you live better and that Right Speech is a simple group of practices to help you in this path.

The evidence we’ve reviewed, moreover, suggests that it brings three surprising results:

1. greater connection with others,
2. the self-awareness needed for growth,
3. and higher levels of performance.

I began this essay, after all, with SSM Health’s superlative performance. Their success followed on crafting a unique culture centered on harmony between words and thoughts. The Buddhists and Aztecs simply developed more general practices with the goal of helping anyone to live a tranquil, happy life.

I’ll leave you with one final quote from Nhat Hanh.

It is said that every time the wind blows through the jeweled trees, a miracle is produced. If we listen carefully to that sound … Right Mindfulness helps us slow down and listen to each word from the birds, the trees, and our own mind and speech (92–93).

Thank you for reading and I hope you learned something.

For more philosophy as a way of life, using all of the world’s traditions, join my newsletter.

Sebastian Purcell’s research specializes in world comparative philosophy, especially as these ancient traditions teach us how to lead happier, richer lives. He lives with his wife, a fellow philosopher, and their three cats in upstate New York.