Help me find a sutta on right speech in a certain context

Q & A
1

I have a memory of a sutta that explains that certain topics should not be discussed with certain people, depending on their character or qualities, because this might cause anger or other bad emotions in them. I have gone through the entire “speech” and “talk” chapters of the CIPS with no luck. Unfortunately I don’t remember enough details of the sutta to find a meaningful search phrase. Everything I’ve tried hasn’t led me anywhere.

Anyone has an idea?

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2

I tried to search with things like “Can’t talk everything with everyone” or “certain topics should not be discussed with certain people”, but I couldn’t find anything. :confused:

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3

an5.157

I also tried @abuddhistview’s tool without luck.

I found it as the last item in the index under “Dhamma teaching”.

In my mind the phrase was “wrongly directed” but neither Bhante Bodhi nor Bhante Sujato uses that. So searching for that didn’t help.

I’ll work on that. Thanks! It is literally about “talk” so my placement under Dhamma teaching is wrongly directed!

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4

I found only these two:

Topics to avoid:

“The Realized One knows the right time to speak so as to explain what he knows to be true, correct, and beneficial, and which is liked by others.”

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5

Is it AN 5.157 ? I searched for “inappropriate” as the first word.

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Absolutely! Thank you both so much!! However, I can only assign “solution” to one of you—so it’s the early bird. :smiling_face:

Thank you! Your index is fantastic nevertheless! :+1: :+1:

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