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“What is truth?” ~ Pontius Pilate

I watched a couple of friends go after each other on the internet last week…all about politics and religion. Of course it got heated and some harsh words were exchanged. Afterwards one of them, knowing of my practice as a Buddhist, asked me for my opinion on some pretty pointed…and basic…questions. “Is it ever all right to lie?”…”Isn’t it always better to tell the truth?”, and “Don’t we have a duty to speak out when we think someone or something is wrong?”

I promised him I would give it some thought…and so here is what I came up with.

Among the Buddhist precepts or guidelines for a moral life is a prohibition against false speech. It is sometimes simply translated as “A disciple of Buddha does not lie”. That would seem clear enough. Don’t ever tell a lie, and always tell the truth. After all, “The truth shall set you free”.

But in reality…that doesn’t work. And it is not what we should demand of ourselves or expect from others.

We all lie almost every day. We call them ‘little white lies’ making a distinction of degree and intent…but it’s still lying. When a wife asks her husband “Does this dress make me look fat” it is unlikely she is looking for a truthful answer. She wants reassurance. When a man explains to his wife the importance he holds in his job, there is sure to be a little puffing of the ego going on. Whenever we reassure ourselves or others, or attempt to spare feelings or sooth concerns we stretch, bend or even avoid the “truth”. Yet, I don’t think that such “lies” violate the precept against “false speech.” I don’t think that the sort of thing Buddha was worried about.

If there is a single point to Buddhist ethics or morality it would seem to me to be this: be compassionate. Since Buddhists see all sentient beings, all life, as sharing the Buddha nature (or the Tao, or God, or the Cosmic giggle…whatever you might call it) we believe we all have a universality, a commonality of being. And while we may not always remember or recognize our common existence, we can try and stay connected to it by a little compassion. Trying to understand, empathize, and even forgive those around us helps us return to that point of remembering that we are all reflective of each other on a deeper level than our seeming differences.

And so I think the false speech prohibited by Buddha isn’t necessarily speech which is factually incorrect. The false speech or lie that Buddha was concerned with happens when we say something that injures another or denies our common nature. The lie prohibited by the Buddhist Precepts is speech which is false to the ideal of compassion. It is speech which harms us by separating us.

This doesn’t mean we can’t have an opinion which differs from those we see around us. Compassion doesn’t require blind complicity. Compassion sometimes means telling someone that you think they are wrong, or that their actions are incorrect. Every child on occasion needs a parent to point out when things are going wrong. Every child needs some direction. And while it would be nice to think that as adults we outgrow that need the reality is that at various points in our life we all need some parental guidance…regardless of our age or experience.

In the same vein, all Buddhist precepts of prohibition also inherently contain affirmative duties. A prohibition against false statements requires as, Roshi Reb Anderson says, an affirmative duty to speak out when others speak or act wrongfully. But we must tread carefully and ask what our purpose in speaking out is.

When we say (as I myself have) things like “the Catholic Church does more harm than good by prohibiting birth control in third world countries” or “the Republican party policies promote poverty and racism” or “Giant corporations don’t care about the environment” it may reflect an opinion so strong that we firmly believe it to be the “truth”.

But is the utterance of this “truth” really meant as a tool to stop or influence wrongful action? Are we saying it because we hope it will have a positive effect in causing those actions to stop? If so then I think we do have an obligation to speak out. And if we truly believe what we say, maybe we have more than a duty to voice an opinion…maybe we have a duty to affirmatively help change things. We can do as little as send donations to Greenpeace or as much as volunteer to work distributing birth control with an international health organization in Africa.

But if we are simply stating some “truth” to distinguish ourselves from the so called “bad guys” or to reassure ourselves of our own good nature or to play to the approval of an audience (which may just be ourselves) then we aren’t obeying a higher duty to the truth. Just the opposite, we are speaking to separate “us” from “them”…and the belief in that separation is a lie.

We can express our concern, even our righteous anger over what we see as social or personal failings of others, but we need to do it in a manner that recognizes that we all bear some of the responsibility for whatever failings there are in the world. And we need to do it in a manner which does not hand off responsibility or blame to someone else.

It’s not just the good of the world we reflect in our eyes and hearts. It is the failures and pain as well. As Buddhist teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh says, we are at once the frog singing in the pond and the snake coming to eat the frog. Or as the cartoonist Walt Kelly put it in in his classic comic strip Pogo many years ago: “We have met the enemy…and he is us”. Once we realize that concept we may be less likely to judge… and less likely to tell a lie.

I hope this answers my friend’s questions.

“The truth is not realized just by me saying what I think is the truth. The truth arises when my truth is offered but not placed above the truth of others.” ~Roshi Reb Anderson

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