There’s a teaching from the Buddha about telling the truth that I find interesting and challenging. The setting is a story of the Buddha speaking to his son seven year old son Rahula. This is right after the Buddha returns home following his awakening.
The Buddha is doing a foot-washing ritual with Rahula, and is holding a little ladle he’s used to scoop water from a bucket. There’s just a tiny bit of water left in it.
The Buddha says to Rahula: “Do you see this little bit of water? This is how little of a contemplative there is in anyone who feels no shame at telling a deliberate lie.”
What he’s saying is that when there is no inner check around lying, a practitioner is hardly on the spiritual path. The foundation of the practice is essentially gone.
Then he throws the water away. “Whatever there is of a contemplative in anyone who feels no shame at telling a deliberate lie is tossed away, just like this.”
What little integrity there is gets cast aside. Then he turns the ladle upside down. It’s empty. “Whatever there is of a contemplative… is empty and hollow. Like this ladle.”
It’s like a part of our being becomes empty and hollow when we aren’t living in integrity.
And then he says: “When anyone feels no shame in telling a deliberate lie, there is no evil, I tell you, they will not do. Thus, you should train yourself: I will not tell a deliberate lie, even in jest.”
Why would the Buddha take such a strong position on lying?
I think it’s because lying conditions the mind. Every time we lie—even in small ways—the mind learns it’s okay to distort, it’s okay to move away from what’s true, it’s okay to shape reality to protect ourselves. And this way of thinking spreads.
At its heart, Dhamma practice is about seeing clearly what’s actually happening right here. We practice that in meditation, and the more we practice, the more we see our experience with granularity. It’s the truth—the way things are—that ultimately sets us free.
But when the mind becomes comfortable bending the truth outwardly, it will bend the truth inwardly. So we’re not just misleading others—we’re misleading ourselves. Then the mind becomes divided, and that fragmentation creates agitation. It weakens our ability to see clearly.
The tendency to lie is often rooted in the sense of self—the self that’s hiding, protecting, posturing, wanting to be perceived a certain way. Wanting praise, not blame. Wanting gain, not loss. This is in itself a form of suffering.
At first, lying feels off. There’s a kind of inner signal. In Buddhism, they talk about hiri and ottappa—conscience, the “guardians of the world.” That voice that says, don’t do that—it’s not going to lead anywhere good. Or that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you say something harsh or inaccurate.
We have these built-in feedback systems. It just doesn’t feel good when we’re out of integrity. When we are in alignment, the Buddha said we experience what he called the bliss of blamelessness. There’s no cognitive load. You don’t have to remember what you said or worry about being found out. There’s a way we can actually relax.
Lying doesn’t just obscure external reality—it corrupts our internal compass. The more we lie, the less we feel that sting of “this is no good.” Eventually, we can lose the ability to distinguish truth from fiction—even in our own mind. When that happens, the path almost becomes impossible.
You can’t really wake up if your own mind is degraded by habitual deception. Truthfulness isn’t just an ethical rule—it’s the foundation for clarity itself. Later in the sutta, the Buddha gives Rahula another teaching.
He asks: What is a mirror for? A mirror is for reflection. Before you act—through body, speech, or mind—reflect:
Will this lead to my welfare and the welfare of others? Or to my detriment and the detriment of others?
If it leads to benefit, go ahead. While you’re doing it, reflect again. If you see it’s causing harm—stop. Pivot. And after the action, reflect again. Was this beneficial? Or harmful? If it was unwholesome, acknowledge it. Learn from it. Let that feeling—the sting of remorse—be a kind of compass. If it was skillful, then stay mentally refreshed and joyful. Continue training in those qualities.
So this is the path. “I will purify my bodily actions through repeated reflection. I will purify my verbal actions through repeated reflection. I will purify my mental actions through repeated reflection.”
Simple enough that a seven-year-old can understand it. And yet, so hard to live. Sometimes when I look around the world, I feel overwhelmed. There’s so much confusion, so much harm, so many problems that seem solvable but aren’t being solved. It can create this feeling of not knowing which way to go. The antidote, for me, is this:
I may not know what to do—but I know which way to face. There’s a phenomenon in motorcycle riding called target fixation. If you’re about to hit a guardrail and you stare at it, you’ll steer right into it. So instead, you look where you want to go. The most elemental, elegant way to do that is to reflect on this question:
What leads to affliction? What leads to happiness? I was reading the news and feeling more and more depressed, and I asked myself: Is this helpful or harmful? It was clearly harmful in that moment. So I closed the laptop.
There are many beautiful teachings—on meditation, on cultivating love, on developing equanimity. This is a teaching you can use in every moment of your day. Whenever there’s a decision point, you can ask:
Is this leading to my benefit—or to my affliction?
So simple. The real practice is remembering to ask.
Thank you for reading,
Gullu