Offer kind speech, he says, especially to those without virtue. We think that people without virtue don’t deserve our kind words. We should condemn or criticize them, or at least relate to them neutrally. Why speak kindly to a nasty and unappealing person? Who does that? But Dogen says the opposite: if you offer kind speech to such a person, you will be amazed at its power; virtue will grow where you thought there was none. Do not ever give up on kind speech; trust it, he says, world after world, lifetime after lifetime. “Kind speech,” he concludes, “has the power to turn the destiny of the
...more
