Principle of Truthfulness P2/1 - Truthful Speech

Principle of Truthfulness P2/1 - Truthful Speech

Looking at principles, taught by the Buddha

principles leading to a genuinely happy life, if not always comfortable.

Principles leading to a life that is of benefit to ourselves and others.

Principles that leads to us being able to deeply reflect.

Principles that lead to wisdom.

The Buddha taught the principle of awareness leads to such things.

So looking at our second principle, the Principle of truthfulness.

This principle can be given a general conrete formulation negatively and positively,

what we try to stop doing,

what we try to do in it’s place.

Precepts, negative and positive:

I undertake the training principle of abstaining from false speech.

With truthful communication I purify my speech.

In Russian we have two possibilities for the translation of truth:

1/ правдивая речь — simple everyday truth.

2/ истинная речь — higher spiritual truth.

The precepts are not rules to follow, it is worth repeating again and again.
It is better to think of them like exercises.
We get better at doing them through practice,
and we reap the benefits of living more skilfully.
Which skills can we develop?
The skill of avoiding lying.
The skill of speaking truthfully.

So first let’s look at what we mean by false speech!
We need to know what there is in us to spiritually work on.
There a different forms of false speech,
some are gross, others are subtle.

1/ Starting with the most gross form of false speech, telling deliberate lies:
We went for a drink with a young woman after work,
and we tell our wife, we were working late at the office.

2/ Exageration and minimisation:
We went jogging and ran four kilometers, but say we ran five kilometers.
There is the desire to make us look better than we really are,
or to make someone else look worse than they really are.

3/ Factual accuracy:
We say we went for lunch with five other people, when in fact there were six people there.
We make a mistake unconsciously,
althouth we still lack of awareness.

4/ White lies:
We don’t want to hurt the other person, so we care for them,
so we avoid telling an uncomfortable truth.
Someone invites us for a meal, and we lie that we are busy.

5/ The long goodbye:
First we tell our English teacher that were not feeling well,
next week we are on a business trip,
the week after we have too much work to do,
eventually he stops asking us about the next lesson.

6/ Not telling the whole truth; we don’t technically lie but we don’t speak the whole truth:
A woman online asks us if we are married, and we simply say no. It’s true, we’re not.
But we don’t mention that we live with our girlfriend.

7/ Not saying what we really think, which means knowing what we really think:
What do we really know?
If you take away everything that we learned from our parents, teachers, friends, in books and online,
what is left, what do we really know?
And if we don’t really know very much, how can we speak the truth?

So here are some of the more prevalent forms of not fully telling the truth.
Can you think of any more?