Knife Mouth, Tofu Heart

When I was little, I always hear this old Chinese saying, "Knife Mouth, Tofu Heart", meaning a person has a very mean mouth saying a lot of mean things but his/her heart is actually very kind and as soft as tofu. My mom especially likes to use this saying to describe my father. I used to think this phrase is a compliment, until a moment ago.

I remember the founder of Tzu Chi organization, Dharma Master Cheng Yen's teaching about bad temper and mean mouth. She said, "Even you have a very kind and soft heart, if you have bad temper, you still cannot consider as a good person,""When you speak good and kinds words, you are releasing Lotus from your mouth. When you speak bad or mean words, you are releasing poisonous snakes from your mouth."

My living environment never let me realize that I am releasing poisonous snakes all these while. Do I have a beautiful heart? I am not sure about it. I just know that I never want something bad happen to anybody. With that, I am including the persons I don't like or the so-called enemies as well. Sometimes I do help people. Then I know, I am not a nice person because I have a mean mouth, a very mean mouth that as sharp as knife!

I have unknowingly hurt the people around me with this mouth, especially the persons that I love. I do not mean what I said when I was angry. Nevertheless, IT IS NOT OK to say it even though I do not mean it. IT IS NOT OK to hurt others with words even when I am super angry. Knowing that I have hurt someone unknowingly with the mean words, especially that someone is somebody that I really care, is really heartbroken.

I remember the hurtful feeling when my parents said something mean to me. I can’t believe that I have brought this pain to the people around me. And now here I am writing this to remind myself not to continue to hurt others with knife mouth. If you have ever done that in your life, let’s put our hands together to learn from wrong. After all, a meaningful life is never quit learning, isn’t it?