As I mentioned in the introductory post, practicing Right Speech means abstaining from four kinds of speech. The first is false speech. Here’s what the Buddha said:

[A person practicing Right Speech] speaks the truth, is devoted to truth, reliable, worthy of confidence, not a deceiver of people…Thus he never knowingly speaks a lie, either for the sake of his own advantage, or for the sake of another person’s advantage, or for the sake of any advantage whatsoever.

In this same passage, the Buddha says this honest person bears witness to what they know, and keeps silent about what they don’t. It’s important to do both, because Right Speech includes both abstaining from lying as well as speaking the truth. If you know something true and don’t say it, you’re just as guilty of false speech. Your silence creates a false impression.

I think this idea of advantage is important, because there’s a natural persuasion in speech that we need to be aware of. Bikkhu Bodhi explains that we can connect these advantages to the three unwholesome roots. When we lie to gain personal advantage, it’s greed. When we lie intending to hurt or damage others, it’s hatred. And when we lie for the sake of a joke, or exaggeration, it’s delusion.

All of which is to say: there are so many ways to lie, and so many reasons we choose to do it.

Which takes us to the heart of the matter: truthfulness is absolutely essential to walking the path. The Buddha said, “One who has no shame in speaking lies is empty of spiritual achievement.” There’s an emptiness in lies. False speech creates a vacuum of meaning, and that hurts us in tangible and destructive ways.

Bikkhu Bodhi explains that lying disrupts the social cohesion we need to live in a workable society. If we can’t trust the people leading, chaos ensues. Society needs mutual trust, which is why any society that’s going to make it holds truthfulness as a central virtue- and holds those who lie accountable. (For a country whose leader reportedly told 13, 435 false statements in the past 993 days, this feels like a timely insight to say the very least.)

Lying also multiplies illusion. (We’re back to that first noble truth again.) Think of the chain of lies you have to create to keep a lie going. When we do this, we’re just sowing delusion and suffering everywhere, because we’re obscuring ourselves and others from the essence of reality.

And that really gets us to the deepest level of false speech: it corrodes the connection between our own inner sense of knowing and the false world we’re choosing instead to inhabit. When we lie, we create a false and unreliable world for ourselves. We cannot have integrity when our inner core is corroded in this way. We never will.

Take a moment to really consider what this means. When we lie, we corrode our own sense of inner cohesiveness. We degrade our own wholeness. Is it any wonder that lies are so destructive to our relationships?

If we want to cultivate integrity, we have to speak truthfully. The Eightfold Path reveals such wisdom here. We begin with Right View- seeing things as they are. We continue with Right Intention- seeking goodwill toward all. And only then can we speak with Right Speech.

This week, how can you abstain from lying and practice speaking the plain truth? Can you become more aware of your intent to deceive or your desire for advantage when you find yourself telling a lie? Will you be honest with yourself about the places where your silence is creating false reality because you choose to avoid the repercussions of speaking the truth aloud?

This post belongs to my series on practicing the Eightfold Path. You can read all my posts on Right Speech here. 

*The photo above was taken by Joel De Vriend at the climate protests against global warming in Amsterdam. I offer my gratitude to all the truth-speakers who demand accountability in the public square.