Edward’s Diary Entry 36 – Virtue 15: Aversion to Slander (“A non-malicious tongue”)

This is also called Absence of faultfinding  (Apaisunam) or absence of narrow-mindedness. The admonition is to “refrain from scandal-mongering and talking ill of others, and correcting them unnecessarily”. Now why is this a Virtue, we can ask? Personally, because of my introverted and sensitive character, I have always felt something wrong with talking about people behind their backs, drooling over girls and women, criticising others too much and other backbiting pursuits, so it was easy enough for me to understand this. It gives me a plus for this Virtue, and so my concentration can go for others. But why is this a “divine endowment”? Well, from the standpoint of mental health, if one is Sattwic or wise, one already realises that 1) It is the mark of a weak, externally stimulated character to see and talk about faults in others, viz “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” [Mt 7:3]. My mission is to work on the huge faults within me, not talk about others’ faults. 2) It wrong psychology to criticise others and not criticise oneself first – it is the trick of the ego that does this, making “myself” invisible to myself, but revealing all the faults and imperfections of another. 3) It is a waste of time and energy to concentrate on others, because we will never have either enough time or enough energy to correct 7.4 billion humans minus one (me!), who imagines him or herself already perfect enough to find fault with the rest of humanity. And 4) It is a wrong “reading” of reality to see faults in another and criticise them. The right readout of reality is to practise one’s own Virtues and USE THE SO-CALLED IMPERFECTIONS OF OTHERS as mirrors to see what we also are capable of, and why we should not go down that road. Most faultfinding is an egoic exercise that perpetrates ego in oneself and the other person (strengthening it) while perpetuating the state of ignorance and lack of awareness. This is why in the painting Botticelli shows us how Midas with his donkey ears listens to Ignorance and Suspicion while extending his hand to Slander (or Calumny), attended by Fraud and Conspiracy, with black-robed Repentance behind them and, well out of earshot, Truth herself looking upwards to heaven and impervious to all the scandal-mongering going on.