• Table of Contents
  • A Song of Compassion by Swami Veda Bharati
  • Do Not Lie by Swami Rama
  • 2019 Sangha Gathering and Preparations by Swami Ritavan Bharati
  • Children’s Yoga Camp Gurgaon, 2018 by Sucheta Sabharwal and Anjali Misra
  • Ahymsin Thailand by John Sellinger
  • Himalayan Yoga Workshops by Atsuko Kiyoyoshi
  • A Small Offering by Shauna Tuttle
  • Retreat and Workshops in Japan by Yuko Metsugi
  • Dear Yoga Mentor, My Question Is…
  • 2018 Events and Beyond
  • Full Moon Meditation Dates
  • Location of our SRSG ashram
• AHYMSIN Newsletter Archive

Do Not Lie

by Swami Rama

(This is an excerpt from Conscious Living: A Guidebook for Spiritual Transformation by Swami Rama, Lotus Press, pages 106- 108.)

Be nice, be kind, be gentle, be loving. What is new about what you are studying, tell me? Have you read anything new anywhere? You have learned ten words for one word, is that improvement in your knowledge? Then what is that knowledge which we are trying to explore and understand today? My whole life, my mother, my father, grandfather, my teachers, everyone says, “Speak the truth,” and I do not know how to. That’s a very serious problem. I would like to speak the truth, everyone wants to speak the truth but nobody teaches you how. You see at home, children are spanked by their parents when the children lie. But after ten minutes, the child finds that Mommy is lying to Daddy, and Daddy is lying to Mommy. The child is confused, “Is it a rule for me not to lie?” So the child tells her brother, “We are not allowed to lie. They are grownup, they can lie.” We don’t find good examples in our childhood. All aspects of education are given by the institutions of the world, except one education called exemplary education, where you learn through example. We suffer on account of this lack of exemplary education.

Now, what is happening in your families? No matter how many lies you speak from morning till evening, you spank your children, saying, “Always speak the truth.” No matter how great a liar you are, you don’t want your children to lie. The father constantly lies, mother constantly lies, and child is confused. He thinks that my parents have a license to lie, but I’m just a kid, I don’t have that license. This is true. So he’s confused. How to practice truth? No mother or father ever teaches the children that. You don’t teach them how to speak the truth. This is the point because you do not know yourself. So, for ages there is this myth, “Speak the truth, speak the truth, speak the truth.” This is all nonsense, it’s a principle, it’s not practice. It happened with me. I was confused in my childhood. My Master never spanked me, but others spanked me and everybody said, “Hey, speak the truth.” I said, “Look, I am not what you think, don’t touch me.” But I was a kid. I said, “Tell me what is that truth.” Nobody ever told me that.

One day I was very upset and I told my Master, “You have ruined my life.” He looked at me and said, “I brought you up, I educated you, I gave you so much love. I don’t want to hear such a thing from you. Do you ever find me selfish?” I said, “It’s not a question of being selfish or not being selfish. My life has been ruined by you.” He said, “Why? What have I done to you?” I said, “I am still ignorant and a fool.” He said, “I tried my best to teach you, but you have not been able to learn.” I said, “What you are teaching me today, ‘Do this, do that, do this, do that,’ that’s the same thing that all mothers at home teach their children.”

I told my Master, “I know that I should speak the truth but I don’t know how to. Will you please teach me? Show me how to speak the truth.” He taught me that the simple way of speaking the truth is by not lying. If you do not lie, you are speaking the truth. But if you are trying to speak the truth and you do not know what truth is, then you are making your own truth. You say my truth is my truth and I am speaking the truth and you should listen to me. That is confusion. Do not lie. By not lying, you practice speaking the truth. Do not do what is not to be done according to your conscience. By not doing what is not to be done, you start doing what is right.

Practice is different from the principle. It’s easy to say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” Learn to practice. Don’t give up your practice. If you are defeated by others, it doesn’t matter; but if you are defeated by yourself, that’s a very bad thing. Then you are helpless. No one can cure you. There are diseases which cannot be cured by anyone when you become helpless. “No medicine is helping me, nothing is happening to me, I am going to die. The world is so gloomy.” When you become totally negative, you cripple your willpower. Don’t allow that to happen.

Editor's Note

Conscious Living: A Guidebook for Spiritual Transformation by Swami Rama is available as a paperback, in Kindle, or as an audio book (at CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon).