What is gossiping?
Fault-finding or gossiping means engaging in negative or unnecessary discussions about any person or their situation.
“Did you hear? They did this!”
“Oh! That’s really bad!”
“Should they even be doing that? I would never do such a thing!”
“What happened with so-and-so?”
It usually begins as a simple, ordinary matter but then people start adding their own spices to the matter like salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and whatever spices they can get their hands on! By the time it reaches back to the person concerned, they are left wondering, “What is this? What actually happened?” The original matter is completely changed!
There is a very well-known story. There was once a mouse who had seven tails. The other animals around him would tease him, saying, “Seven-tailed mouse! Seven-tailed mouse!” The mouse thought, “If I cut off my tails, people will stop teasing me.” So he cut off one tail. But the teasing didn’t stop. Instead, they began saying, “Six-tailed mouse! Six-tailed mouse!” Troubled and frustrated, the poor mouse kept cutting off his tails one by one…until none were left. But even then, people didn’t stop. Now they started calling him, “Tailless mouse! Tailless mouse!”
Fault-finding and gossiping are just like this. Even without any real facts or reasons, people continue speaking negatively about others.
Characteristics of gossiping
The word itself suggests “digging” repeatedly scratching and digging at something until it starts to irritate, like picking at a wound. It becomes similar to a wound that keeps getting worse because it is constantly disturbed.
Not only that, once such a wound is created, people gather around and make it even bigger. Instead of healing, the hurt keeps increasing, and the person becomes deeply disturbed and restless.
“You didn’t come to that event today? Were you told not to come? Did you have a fight with someone?”
“Why don’t your children come to the temple? Do they not believe in God?”
“Your husband didn’t come? That’s very wrong! Everyone else’s husband has come.”
“You live alone there? And your wife lives alone here?”
“You were in the hospital? Why did you have to stay there? Was your health bad?”
“You’re not wearing bangles? No bindi either? Everything is fine, right? We are considered married women, we should wear these.”
“You’ve become so thin! Are you okay? It’s not something serious like cancer or anything, right?” People ask in such a way that the other person actually gets scared!
They keep asking one question after another, “Who is that person? What is their relationship with so-and-so? Why has that person come here?”
Where does the train start, which track it gets on, where it is supposed to be headed, there is no awareness whatsoever! Time and energy are wasted unnecessarily.
In this way, in worldly interactions, such exchanges keep happening again and again. A kind of negative emotional imprint is created. The person being talked about begins to wonder, “Have I done something wrong?”, and this becomes the beginning of their inner suffering.
Another characteristic of gossiping is that a matter gets completely exaggerated and distorted. To explain this, there is an interesting story. A monk was walking along the road when something came out of his mouth. When he took it out and saw, it was a chicken feather. He was surprised, how did this get into his mouth? He became very worried. When he reached home, he told his wife about it. She too was surprised. The man told his wife to be careful that no one should ever come to know about this, otherwise people would misinterpret it. The wife said, “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
But after a while, the wife began to think, “I can’t keep this to myself, my head is about to burst! It feels like smoke is coming out of my ears! Let me do one thing, I’ll tell my trusted neighbour and feel lighter.” So she told her trusted neighbour and took a promise from her that she wouldn’t tell anyone else. But either in the way the wife narrated it, or in the way the neighbour understood it, the story changed. It became that many feathers had come out of the monk’s mouth. The neighbour was very surprised, yet she reassured the wife, saying such things do happen, and promised, “Don’t worry, I’ve sealed my lips. I won’t tell this to anyone!”
Immediately, the neighbour felt the urge to tell someone. Just then she saw a washerwoman passing by and told her the story. But now it was said in such a way that it sounded as if an entire chicken had come out of the monk’s mouth! The washerwoman too was astonished and said she couldn’t believe it, since the monk was a vegetarian! She also promised not to tell anyone, but on the way, she met her friend and ended up telling her. In her excitement, she changed “a chicken” into “many chickens.” Then when that friend told her husband, it sounded as if, instead of one, a whole flock of chickens had come out of the monk’s mouth.
Gradually, by evening, the story spread throughout the village. Soon, the chickens turned into pigeons, ducks, and sparrows. By nightfall, the entire village gathered outside the monk’s house to witness this miraculous event. The monk immediately denied it, saying that no bird had come out of his mouth. But no one was ready to believe him, and everyone insisted that he use his miraculous power to show them by producing a sparrow from his mouth. The man became angry, but there was no way out, so he came up with a plan. He asked everyone to sit outside his house, went inside, and then quietly escaped through the back door into the forest! He decided not to return home until the villagers calmed down and accepted that the whole story was false!
In this way, there is no real reason behind gossiping. It is simply meaningless talk without any purpose or logic. This is often seen in business parties and especially in ladies’ kitty parties. People gather with free time, eat, drink, and enjoy different activities and then such chatter and gossip naturally take over. Usually, one’s own beliefs mix with others’ beliefs, and groups of like-minded people are formed.
Risks of gossiping
Engaging in fault-finding, criticizing others, and distorting matters, and then deriving pleasure from it, is a very serious risk. When we develop negativity toward someone and then pass it on to others, who in turn tell more people, and the cycle continues, it leads to the binding of negative karmas and results in the downfall of our next birth.
A precious human life gets wasted in engaging in such useless negative discussions.
Negativity causes suffering to oneself and also hurts others, whereas positivity brings happiness to oneself and also makes others happy. By taking pleasure in such pointless talk, we harm ourselves in every way.
Whenever we speak negatively about any person, it causes them pain. When we have to face the consequences of that, we ourselves suffer. And even after facing those consequences, if the habit of fault-finding and gossiping does not go away, then no one can help improve it.
Not only that, when we speak negatively about someone to another person, we plant false negative opinions in their mind. As a result, that person’s thinking becomes affected, and we become the cause behind it.
Or else when someone brings negative talk about another person to us, our mind may initially be completely clean toward that person, but then it gets filled with unnecessary negativity. As a result, we ourselves start feeling burdened, and we begin to suffer without any real reason.
When we engage in negative discussions about someone, we become an instrument in causing harm to them. Some people may be living happily, but once negative talk about them begins, within a short time they may become depressed, upset, and start suffering. They begin to feel, “These people have isolated me, they no longer see me as one of them.”
Positive words make a person stronger, whereas negative words weaken them. Just a few negative statements like, “This is how you’re doing it? This is not how it should be done,” can shake and damage a person’s entire belief system.
This is an illustrative story that shows how fault-finding can entirely change a person’s belief. A Brahmin was passing through a forest path carrying a goat on his shoulder. On the way, three tricksters saw him. They decided to take the goat from him, so all three stood along the path at intervals of one kilometer each.
The first one stopped the Brahmin and asked, “Sir! Being a Brahmin, why are you carrying a dog on your shoulder?” The Brahmin was surprised and replied, “No, this is a goat.”
After walking about a kilometer, he met the second trickster, who said, “Sir! Oh my, what are you doing? Does it suit a Brahmin to carry a dog on his shoulder?” The Brahmin felt a bit uneasy, but still said, “This is not a dog, it is a goat.” He continued walking, but a doubt had begun to arise in his mind.
Just then, the third trickster came and said, “Sir! What is this? You will have to go home and bathe. Should one even touch a dog like this?” Hearing this, the Brahmin’s belief changed, “If everyone is saying, then it must be a dog.” And he immediately put the goat down and walked away. After that, the three tricksters gathered and made a meal out of the goat!
In this world, such negative exchanges keep happening between people. By instilling negative impressions in others, one spoils oneself and harms the other person even more. Negativity is a cause of suffering in worldly life.
Ways to overcome the habit of gossiping
Positivity is the cause of happiness. If we remain positive, our strength keeps growing tremendously, whereas negativity weakens and breaks our strength.
In every village, there is both a temple and a garbage dump. We should keep our focus on the good and ignore the bad.
Keep a principle in life, do not get influenced by what others say. If we get swayed by someone’s instigation, negative opinions about others enter our mind, and we end up disturbing our own thinking. That is the greatest foolishness.
Filter any negative talk through three sieves: Is it true? Is it good? And is it useful? If it does not pass through these three filters, then it should not be accepted. Most of the time, people simply repeat what they have heard, without being sure whether it is true or not. Negative talk about a person is never good, and if we examine whether it benefits anyone or is of any real use, we will realize that it is merely pointless discussion.
If someone comes to us to engage in gossiping or to speak negatively about someone, we should gently tell them, “That person is not as negative as we think, there is a lot of positivity in them. Let us focus on the positive. Why fall into fault by dwelling on the negative?”
Even a depressed person can return to normal and begin to blossom if we speak positively about them. If someone says one negative thing, we should respond with five positive ones. We can also turn around the negative by saying, “It’s not as you say, I know them. Everyone makes a few mistakes, but after all, they are very good people.”
Whether it is at home, in the office, or in society, everyone together should decide to engage only in positive conversations. Even if ten things have gone wrong, if even one thing has gone right, we should discuss that positivity and not dwell on the negative at all. If someone starts speaking negatively, others around should gently alert them and, if possible, calmly put a stop to it.
On the other hand, if someone speaks negatively about us, we should not get affected by it. Just as in winter we do not tell the cold to stop; winter never changes or improves, we adjust by wearing a sweater to protect ourselves against it. In the same way, we should wear the armor of right understanding when facing others’ negativity, so that our beliefs do not get disturbed.
Where we are unable to stop negative talk, we should pray and maintain a positive intent, “Oh God! May their weaknesses be removed, may they become aware of their own mistakes, may they be free from them, and may their awareness increase about what they are saying.”
We should keep repenting for any negative words we may have spoken so far, resolving within, “I should never speak like this again. If possible, I will speak a few kind and positive words, but I will not say anything negative.”
Speaking negatively harms both, ourselves and others. Therefore, we must become aware of what we are speaking and how our words may negatively affect the other person.
