Yesterday, I attended a meditation session with Charity Focus. The group meets every Wednesdays. After the meditation, a short ‘thought of the day’ is read out. Then group members share whatever thoughts come to their mind one by one. Yesterday’s thought was on lying. One of the Buddhist precepts for ’sila’ (moral behaviour) is non-lying, which is considerably challenging (that is why it is a precept). A few of the 30-odd speakers left an impression on me:
- “Children do not lie. They are upfront about their observations and their feelings. That is one of the reasons why they are said to be divine in every culture. Over time, children become adults. Along the way, they learn to lie.” — Speaker 1
- “We form images of ourselves and try to maintain these images. We lie to conform, for example, to our self image or to our social image.” — Speaker 2
- “Language is an approximation to truth. While narrating one’s personal experience, language limits us to convey only some parts of the whole. The blind man and the elephant. Is this lying?” — Speaker 3
- “Positive thinking works wonders in coping with stress. Many Nazi camp survivors lived through stressful times with strong positive thinking. Is positive thinking lying?” — Speaker 4
Personal remark: The ‘intent’ behind any action is important; this was not touched upon by anybody.
looks like a nice group. thanks for the info.
1 Children do lie and manipulate, almost as soon as they learn to speak (non-verbal manipulation starts even before that). Manipulation is pervasive in childhood, and even in some animal species. Tabula Rasa theory is long dead.
2 No comments
3 Language is a tool, and though there is no “perfect” expression of an experience, the intent to convey means one will find words and gestures to convey the meaning. The intent to lie or mislead is what is more troublesome than a misunderstanding (which can be easily corrected if not taken to heart).
4 Emotional antidotes (such as bhajans, prayers, positive thinking) sometimes are useful in temporarily resolving stressful emotional situations. If there is no emotional stress to begin with, the so-called positive therapies are not needed.
What is important is to realize the basis of emotional stress (our mental programming) and to work for it, while using temporary reliefs as needed.
There is a definition for people who think children do not lie– and parent is not it.
Kids lie from the word go. It is natural, because children’s fear of punishment is greater than their ethics. Just like we all would like to avoid and avert ourselves from pain, children avoid putting themselves at risk.
As we grow up, we learn to fight past the fear of reprisal and own up to our actions. That comes with maturity.
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Now, children also do not understand the concepts of social grace: when to be politically polite in a social situation. Those situation show how unadulterated children’s mind are.
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Remember that sila has to do with kamma. Kamma is determined by volition or intent. So a child’s lie is less kharmically harmful than an adult’s lie because a child lies to avoid pain and an adult’s lie often involves deception for personal gain.
Response to comment by Speaker 4: Positive thinking is not lying. It is more along the lines of forecasting a positive future. In a Nazi camp, I do not believe the inmates are thinking what a wonderful time they are having. Rather, they might be counting their blessings… “I am alive yet another day”, and hoping they might be alive for a few more days, and that someone would come and rescue them soon.
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Gurmeet raised an interesting point about “intent” in lying. I was reading a book about male adolescent development (since I have a pre-teen son). The author gave an example of a young boy lying to his parents that everything was fine at school. The boy was aware that his school principal had already told his parents that he had been in trouble at school.
The explanation the author had provided was that boys have a big ego. First, he is embarassed at being caught and getting in trouble at school. Secondly, his parents (usually, the mom) make him feel even more embarrassed by calling him out. In a woman’s world, this is a perfect opportunity to “bond”, by confessing mistakes and sharing their feelings. In a boy’s world, this is yet another reinforcement of his mistake, making him feel more embarrassed that now, even more people know about his goof-up. He tries to put-up a “bravado” and denies that anything is wrong, which the mother sees as lying.