Hello and welcome to another episode of the Secular Buddhism Podcast.

This is episode number 113. I am your host Noah Rochetta, and today I'm talking about

right speech or skillful communication.

As always keep in mind you don't need to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist.

You can use it to learn to be a better whatever you already are.

Let's start out by talking about the Zen Kowan I left you in the last podcast episode.

This is the Kowan that's called the Short Staff. Shuzan held out his short staff and said,

if you call this a short staff you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff you

ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this? This is one of those short and simple Kowans

that's meant to make you really think. He brings out what seems like two opposing arguments here.

One is that if you do call it a short staff you're opposing the reality of what it is.

So let's start with that. What is this thing? I think Kiri is focusing on a couple of things.

For me this is how this makes sense. Short is relative. It's only a short staff when it's

compared to another staff. Let's say a longer staff. So if it's stacked next to a longer staff

then sure it's the short staff. But if you put it next to another staff that's shorter than this one

this isn't the short staff this is the long staff. So we have the problem of comparison. What are

we comparing it to to decide that it's short or not? But then the other argument that he brings up

is that if you do not call it a short staff you ignore the fact. And again the fact is interdependent.

Well if it's next to a longer staff and we don't call it a short staff then we're ignoring the fact

that it is shorter than the one that it's sitting next to. So for me this Kowan becomes really powerful

when I try to think of it in terms of seeing through the lens of impermanence and through the

lens of interdependence. We talk about this often in Buddhism right? Seeing through

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