The Buddhist Who Says F*ck

YES, I SAY IT… DAILY. 🙄

I wrote this post some years ago and have always liked it. It perfectly sums up so many elements of my personality and life experience.

I’m not a big fan of the robes and rituals, elaborate ceremonies, or festivals associated with some Buddhist traditions.

My path is dedicated to a secular Buddhist practice that aims to help others eliminate suffering.

I’m also very free with my vocabulary, often using words that His Holiness the Dalai Lama probably wouldn’t ever say.

As a child of the 60s and 70s —the so-called Generations Jones— my lively vocabulary always bothered my parents, but it continues to serve me well in times of expressive need.

Total transparency: I say f*ck and sh*t several times each day, so much so that one might call them my mantra.

I’ve used these words for quite a while. There were times when I’d beat myself up for swearing in front of my youngest son, to whom I was a single parent. As a teen becoming immersed in the local, independent music scene in Santa Cruz, California, it wasn’t like he’d never heard anyone talk this way.

Still, I didn’t feel entirely right about it. After all, a parent is supposed to be a child’s role model, right?

Crap…probably f*cked that up, too.

For a while, I made a concerted effort to stem the flow of f*ck and sh*t. I wasn’t too bothered by uttering damn or even the occasional goddamnit as they were always exclamations that underscored a stupid mistake on my part most of the time.

My experience teaches me that language is only offensive when the listener interprets its meaning differently from the speaker's.

I’m a non-conformist, and just because something is PC or ‘within the mainstream of society’ (a phrase that begs us all to become mindless lemmings, in my opinion), that doesn’t mean much to me.

As a ZENish Buddhist, I live and interpret reality according to my experience. If my experience calls for the utterance of the occasional f*ck or sh*t, so be it.

Life goes on.

Appropriate Intention and Harsh Speech

In the Eightfold Path, the Buddha taught his followers to use speech skillfully, and in ways that don’t denigrate others or would be considered insulting.

Here’s how Noah Levine, writing in Against the Stream, described his use of harsh language:

Harsh speech has been my habit since an early age. I have always loved the shock value of swearing. Over the years, my vocabulary hasn’t changed much, but my intentions have changed a lot. I still swear quite a bit, but my use of fuck, shit, bitch, and balls serves more as an exclamation point to illustrate my sentiment than a sword to cause harm with. It is my feeling that swearing isn’t always harsh or malicious. Like everything else, it depends on the intention – in this case, our intention in using the language.”

My youngest son is now 28 and periodically uses the same language but is also a straight-edge, tattooed gentleman.

So, I guess I didn’t do such a bad job raising him. 😉

There is a vast intentional difference between calling a woman a bitch and joking about how your job is a bitch.

Calling someone a ‘f*ckwad’ is denigrating, but exclaiming, “WTF!” when you’ve inserted the wrong house key into the doorknob -for the third f*cking time- isn’t. 🤷🏼‍♂️

There Were No Sailors in My House

I don’t come from a long line of colorful linguists with tattoos and vocabularies like those of the proverbial sailor.

In fact, my mom and dad never used swear words in raising us, and they also never had any tattoos. But despite these apparent faults (kidding), they raised three adults who use language relatively freely.

Maybe it’s a generational thing, as my American generation embraced the freedom of expression painfully birthed in the 1960s.

Our language is a product of our intention, and if our purpose in swearing is to punctuate our expressions with emphasis and given the right social situation, I don’t see the harm.

Some traditionalists will undoubtedly differ in their opinions, but that’s OK.

Vive la f*cking différence!