Lord Krishna and the austerities of speech.
Vaisesika Dasa: Keeping things simple: To advance in yoga – any kind of yoga – one must first control the tongue. As a rudder is the most critical mechanism for steering a ship, the tongue is one’s most vital organ for defining one’s course in life.
The great Acarya (world teacher) of bhakti yoga, Rupa Goswami, in his essential teachings on bhakti yoga called The Nectar of Instruction, starts with this: “One must first control one’s urge to speak.” If one can control the tongue, he suggests, all the other senses will follow.
Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of The Four Agreements, compares one’s words to seeds that implant themselves in one’s mind and heart.
When one speaks with a motive to injure or to undermine others, or when one speaks whimsically – gossiping, for instance – one’s seed-like words take root and grow into poisonous trees with deadly fruits.
To counteract these anomalies, in the Gita, Lord Krishna suggests the following austerities of speech.
Speak words that are:
1. Truthful
2. Pleasing
3. Beneficial
4. Not agitating to others
&
5. Regularly recite the Vedic literature
Think before you speak. If the words you are about to say don’t fit into one of the categories listed above, don’t let them out.
According to the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu, Krishna reveals Himself to one who practices such control of the tongue.
“No one can understand Krishna as He is by the blunt material senses. But He reveals Himself to the devotees, being pleased with them for their transcendental loving service unto Him, which begins with the tongue.” (Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu 1.2.234)