EEP Essay #27 February

The Imperfection of Lying

Abstaining from false speech (musāvāda) is the fourth of the five lay precepts. However, the suttas do not specify what false speech might mean in the context of this precept. While false speech may seem to be an obvious concept, there is plenty of ambiguity about what to include as part of the precept. For example, should all statements that are not factual in nature be considered “false speech?” If one unknowingly says something false, is it a violation of the precept? If the precept specifically refers to lying and speech which is intentionally deceitful, are all forms of lying and all deceitful speech violations of the fourth precept, or are there exceptions, e.g., to prevent greater harm from being done? This essay attempts to uncover what might have been the meaning of “false speech” for the Buddha and those who composed the suttas. To do this, I pull together the few and scattered statements related to false speech found in the suttas and in the Vinaya. With this as a foundation, I will consider how these statements might be relevant for our contemporary engagement with the fourth precept. In the suttas, the wrongness of false speech is emphasized in it being called “non- dhamma”, i.e. not the truth or not the Dharma of the Buddha.1 To lie is to stay on the “near shore” and to tell the truth is the “far shore” where the goal of Buddhist practice is attained. 2 More dramatically, lying is referred to as speech that is like “dung” and speaking truthfully is speech that is like “flowers.”3 The Buddha emphasized the importance of not lying in telling his son Rahula that “when one is not ashamed to knowingly lie, there is no evil, that one would not do.”4 The Buddha then added that one should therefore train oneself not to lie—even as a joke. Lying can have drastic karmic consequences both in this life and lives to come.5 This is especially the case for people who lie regularly:

“False speech, repeatedly pursued, developed, and cultivated, is conducive to hell, to the animal realm, and to the sphere of afflicted spirits; for one reborn as a human being false speech at a minimum conduces to false accusations.6

1 AN 10.174 2 AN 10.169 3 AN 3.28 4 MN 61 5 AN 10.168 6 AN 10.99

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The last point mentioned represents the idea that karmic consequences are somehow reciprocal to the act done: a harmful act done to others results in a related harmful consequence for oneself. In this case, the person who lies to others will be lied about by others in a future life. One early Buddhist fable, presented as a past-life memory of the Buddha, places the origin of societally widespread lying at the time when thieves started to deny they had stolen.7 Another story, more a myth than a fable, describes how lying begins when those who steal make false promises to stop stealing.8 The more immediate psychological reason for false speech is said to be the agitation caused by greed, hatred and delusion.9 In one forceful account, the Buddha provides the following description of how the desire for “gain, honor, and praise” can transform someone disinclined to lie into a liar:

Bhikkhus, dreadful are gain, honor, and praise, bitter, vile, obstructive to achieving the unsurpassed security from bondage. Bhikkhus, I have known of a certain person here, whose mind I have encompassed with my own mind: ‘This venerable one would not knowingly lie even for the sake of his mother ... even for the sake of his father ... even for the sake of his brother ... his sister ... his son ... his daughter ... his wife.’ Yet some time later I see him, his mind overcome and obsessed by gain, honor, and praise, telling a deliberate lie. So dreadful, bhikkhus, are gain, honor, and praise, so bitter, vile, obstructive to achieving the unsurpassed security from bondage. Therefore, bhikkhus, you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will abandon the arisen gain, honor, and praise, and we will not let the arisen gain, honor, and praise persist obsessing our minds.’10

Other passages mention that the motivation for lying is not limited to benefiting oneself. The Buddha explained that one can knowingly speak falsehoods for one’s own purposes, for the purposes of others, and for the purposes of both self and others.11

7 DN 26.14 8 DN 27.19 9 AN 10.174; lobha hetu kampi, dosa hetu kampi, moha hetu kampi. 10 SN 17.37-43 11 MN 65.13

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While in the suttas there are no teachings that specifically elucidate the meaning of the fourth precept, the concept of false speech is discussed in other contexts, most prominently in several of the monastic rules of discipline found in the Vinaya.

The Monastic Rule Against False Speech

The most significant Vinaya rule concerning false speech is the rule that “knowingly speaking falsely requires confession” (sampajāna musāvāde pācittiya).12 The Vinaya discussion of this rule is done in somewhat legalistic terms, so monastics will know how to administer monastic discipline. Noteworthy in this rule is the requirement that to be a false statement it needs to be spoken “knowingly” (sampajāna). This suggests that the concern is not with unintentional or unknowing forms of false speech. Saying something which is false without knowing it is false would not be considered a violation of this rule. The “fine print” at the end of the Vinaya discussion of this rule explicitly states there is no offense if one has spoken in play or hurriedly. The inline commentary to this passage explains that “in play” (davā) refers to speaking [too] quickly, and that speaking hurriedly (ravā) refers saying something other than what one meant say. At least from the commentarial explanation it seems that speaking in play is a non-offense only if one has spoken fast enough so as to not to know what one is saying. The Vinaya also exempts from the rule those who speak while insane. The disciplinary consequence for lying is to make a statement of “confession” that provides some corrective for one’s false statement. “Confession” is the common English translation for pācittiya. In practice, performing a pācittiya is a clear verbal acknowledgement of having done something requiring such an admission in front of another monastic. In contrast to some religions where a confession is associated with subsequently being forgiven for a transgression, in the early monastic community there was no idea of such forgiveness. In the case of lying, confession is what reestablishes a monastic in the monastic life; the personal karmic repercussions of the lie and confession are not addressed in the Vinaya. In the suttas, when a monk acknowledges a fault to the Buddha, his standard response is to state But since you see your transgression as such and make right (paṭikaroti) in accordance with the Dhamma, we accept you

12 Pācittiya rule 1

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[back in good standing]; for it is growth in the Noble One’s Discipline when one sees one’s transgression as such and make right in accordance with the Dhamma by undertaking restraint for the future.13 Here, the Buddha emphasizes the personal benefits, in terms of personal growth, of an admission of fault and subsequently committing to being restrained in the future. While within the extensive list of monastic rules, ‘making right’ in accordance with the Dhamma varies depending on the transgression, acknowledgement of one’s faults is a central practice. An example of the high value the early Buddhist community put on confession is the story of the Buddha admonishing his son Rāhula to avoid lying. After doing so, the Buddha then broadens his instruction. He states that if a monastic has harmed self, others, or both self and others with misconduct—of body, speech, or mind—this should be told to wise companions in the holy life.14 Then having “pointed out, revealed and declared”15 what one had done, one should be restrained in the future. It is noteworthy that the requirement to confess one’s wrongdoing says nothing about confessing to the person one has harmed or, in the case of making a false statement, to the person to whom one has lied. The instruction is simply to confess to some fellow monastic(s). It seems the emphasis is on reestablishing oneself in the rules of restraint that are at the center of the monastic training in sīla. Healing or reconciling the relationship with the person one has lied to is not emphasized. For a monastic, the “legal” consequence, i.e., confession, associated with the rule against lying is not as severe as the consequences for acts requiring expulsion (e.g., sexual intercourse), suspension (e.g., touching a woman in the case of a monk), or a penalty (e.g., keeping extra robe- cloth for more than ten days). For lying, a monastic must only confess having done so, and through the confession one returns to good standing within the community. This is also the case with a subsequent rule against evasive speech used by a monastic who is being questioned about possibly having committed an offense.16 Such evasion, perhaps a lie of omission, is also rectified through confession.

13 MN 65.13 14 MN 61.11 (i 416-417). An example of a monk confessing to another is found at MN 104.18. 15 (deseti, vivarati, uttānī) 16 Pācittiya rule 12

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Some false statements warrant more severe consequences than confession. Provoking someone to commit suicide by making false statements is treated as the same as killing someone in the Vinaya. A monastic who does this is thereby excluded from the monastic order. A class of false statements which also results in expulsion, the most severe consequence a monastic can receive, is to claim attainments of spiritual states one has not experienced. The rule goes as follows:

Should any monastic, without direct knowledge, claim having a superior human state, a truly noble knowledge and vision, saying, “Thus do I know; thus do I see,” such that regardless of whether or not the monastic is cross-examined on a later occasion, and—being remorseful and desirous of purification—might say, “Friends, not knowing, I said I know; not seeing, I said I see—vainly, falsely, idly,” unless it was from over- estimation, the monastic is defeated and no longer in affiliation.17

The Vinaya explanation of this rule specifies that the rule is violated only when one knowingly lies about one’s attainment. In other words, it is not an offense if one claims attainments one believes one has realized but in fact has not, i.e., in cases where one overestimates one’s own attainment. We see, then, that the Vinaya distinguishes different kinds of false speech, with different degrees of disciplinary consequences. Their commonality, however, is that to be considered an offense, speaking falsely has to be done consciously.

False Speech in the Fourth Unskillful Action

As stated above, the suttas do not provide definition or example of what is false speech in terms of the fourth lay precept. They do, however, provide one detailed example—in discussions of the fourth of the ten unskillful actions. As with the monastic rules, this discussion emphasizes that false speech is considered unskillful when a person knowingly makes a false statement: Here, if he is summoned to a council, to an assembly, to his relatives’ presence, to his guild, or to the court, and questioned as a witness thus: ‘So, good man, tell what you know,’ then, not

17 Pārājika rule 4

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knowing, this person says, ‘I know,’ or knowing, he says, ‘I do not know’; not seeing, he says, ‘I see,’ or seeing, he says, ‘I do not see.’ Thus he knowingly (sampajāna) speaks falsehood for his own ends, or for another’s ends, or for some trifling worldly end.18

This description of a lying witness is the only explication the fourth of the ten unskillful courses of action in the suttas. It describes a situation where lying concerns a serious matter, serious enough for a summons to a meeting of family, colleagues, or rulers. To summarize, false speech must be knowingly spoken in order to qualify either as a violation of the monastic rules or as a transgression of the fourth unskillful action. This suggests that the abstention from false speech in the fourth lay precepts should also be understood as concerned with consciously spoken false speech. In addition to the omission of explanations of the fourth lay precept, the Buddha also does not discuss what lay people might do to “make right” a transgression of the precept. This is left to the laity to figure out for themselves. Perhaps the lack of guidance on this matter is because lay people are not under the “jurisdiction” of the Buddha, Buddhist monastics, or any other Buddhist ecclesiastic authority. Even so, some of the monastic practices may be usefully and voluntarily adopted by lay people. It may be beneficial for lay people to confess a transgression of the fourth precept and in so doing discover that “it is growth in the Noble One’s Discipline when one sees one’s transgression as such and make right in accordance with the Dhamma by undertaking restraint for the future.”19

The Buddha’s False Speech

In the suttas, some statements attributed to Buddha appear, at first glance, as forms of false speech. If accurate, however, this would appear to contradict the notion that the Buddha is completely accomplished in sīla, that he is incapable of violating any of the precepts. Therefore, in order to avoid a contradiction, these seemingly false statements must be understood as not actually false or deceitful. Perhaps such an understanding suggests a more nuanced view of the

18 E.g., MN 41 (i 286) 19 MN 65.13

6 EEP Essay #27 February fourth lay precept, that is, that further reflection and analysis may be useful in deciding what constitutes false speech. Perhaps the most striking example of the Buddha saying things that are not literally true occurs in the Aṅgulimāla Sutta in the Middle Length Discourses, a discourse repeatedly concerned with the nature of true and false statements. Here the Buddha walks through the forest in such a (magical) way that the serial killer Aṅgulimāla, running, is not able to catch up to him. When Aṅgulimāla calls out for the Buddha to “stand still” (ṭhita), the Buddha states that he is standing still and that Aṅgulimāla should do so likewise.20 As the Buddha was walking when he made his statement and as the initial “stand still” in discussion is Aṅgulimāla’s demand that the Buddha stop walking, it would seem the Buddha has said something false. However, Aṅgulimāla decides that this must be a true statement because he believes Buddhist monastics “speak truth and assert the truth.” For readers to understand the Buddha’s reply as truthful they have to recognize that he changed the meaning of “stand still” from its literal meaning to a figurative meaning of having stopped being violent. The Buddha was not trying to deceive Aṅgulimāla, he was getting his attention through the surprise of a seemingly false statement. A similar play between literal and figurative meanings of a word occurs later in the sutta when the Buddha tells the now monk Aṅgulimāla to assert that since the time he was born he has never killed anyone. Taken literarily, the Buddha is telling the former serial murderer to lie. However, when Aṅgulimāla points this out, the Buddha tells him to instead state that since he was born into the noble birth (i.e., become a monk), he has not killed anyone. Here again, it would seem that the Buddha’s first instruction was not meant to be taken literally. Rather, he spoke figuratively, perhaps to make the point to Aṅgulimāla that he had become, in a sense, “reborn” out of his violent past. The Nanda Sutta in the Udana also appears at first glance to present the Buddha as tricking, perhaps deceivingly, his cousin Nanda into remaining in the monastic life. 21 Nanda wants to disrobe after seeing a beautiful woman in town. The Buddha, through supernatural powers, brings Nanda to a celestial realm and introduces him to 500 beautiful celestial maidens. When Nanda agrees that these maidens are much more beautiful than the woman he met in town, the Buddha promises that he will guarantee that if Nanda remains a monk he will be reborn

20 MN 86.5 21 Udāna 3.2

7 EEP Essay #27 February among these maidens. Nanda agrees, engages more ardently in the practice and attains full awakening, at which point he will not be reborn anywhere, including amongst the celestial maidens. On the surface, it would seem that the Buddha tricked Nanda into staying in the holy life with the promise of celestial maidens. One could argue that the Buddha may well have made good on his promise if Nanda had not become fully liberated, and so did not actually lie or obviously deceive. Nonetheless, the Buddha’s strategy certainly appears to be a kind of trickery.

The stories of Aṅgulimāla and Nanda are both composed in a literary style that emerged several centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha. The questionable ways the Buddha speaks in both suttas is quite different from how the Buddha is depicted in the suttas that appear to be composed earlier, closer to his time, maybe even during his lifetime. These two suttas may well have been attempts by the later tradition to grapple with the issue of what exactly constitutes false and true speech, an issue which the early texts do not adequately address.

Discussion

As the fourth of the five precepts, abstaining from false speech is presented in absolute terms without any explanation for what does and does not constitute such speech. This absolute stance is also seen in statements that false speech is non-Dharma and in the claim that “arahants abandon and abstain from false speech.”22 But the legalistic discussion of false speech in the monastic rule book suggests that there are nuances when we consider what the violation of this precept might include. At least for monastics, simply speaking what is not true is not necessarily a violation; it is doing so knowingly. It also seems that doing so spontaneously in play — presumably with no deception intended — is also not a violation of the rule. The monastic rule against lying exists within the context of a well-defined legalistic framework, including nuanced interpretations of each rule and clear penalties/consequences for their violation. The suttas do not discuss the fourth lay precept within a comparable context, and they do not provide ecclesiastical commentary or any provision for sanctioning/punishing lay person for transgressing against the precept.

22 AN 3.71

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So how is a lay person to understand the proper application of the fourth precept? Is it a violation of the precept to playfully tell a tall-tale for the explicit purpose of entertainment, recount a fable for the purpose of edification, or experiment with a new persona and life history in a playful session of improv, perhaps done for therapeutic purposes? Is it a violation to tell a white lie, especially as a way of avoiding someone feeling hurt? And does it transgress the precept to make grandiose exaggerations to give emotional expression to one’s enthusiasm? One possible answer to these questions is to consider the Buddha’s statement, mentioned above, that false speech is caused by greed, hatred and delusion. Perhaps there are forms of false speech which do not arise out of these things. While in a literal sense such speech may be stating something which is not true, it might not be musāvāda if it is not connected to the three unskillful roots. The monastic discussion of the specific rule prohibiting false speech (Pāticcaya 3) says nothing about the impact false speech has on others. There is no general recognition that different impacts on others may warrant different forms of disciplinary consequences for the monastic who speaks what is false. There does, however, seem to be some consideration of the severity of the impact of one’s speech in the Vinaya discussion of the rule against killing (Pārājika rule 1). Here, saying something false to provoke someone to commit suicide results in expulsion from the monastic order. But rather than being a penalty for speaking falsely, the penalty is for knowingly provoking someone else to end their life. In the Vinaya’s discussion about not lying about one’s spiritual attainments, this clearly concerns a particular form of false speech that is treated much more seriously than the rule that a monastic must confess having knowingly spoken falsely (Pārājika rule 4). However, the wrongness of making false statements about one’s attainments is defined by the wickedness of the deed itself, not the impact it has on others. Even so, the Vinaya suggests different consequences for different forms of lies. This suggests that lay practitioners might also differentiate between different degrees of severity in transgressions of the fourth precept. This differentiation, in turn, suggests there may be different consequences or amends for different lapses in adhering to the fourth precept. As with the third precept, we see that the suttas do not provide the explanations we would need to apply the fourth precept in all areas of lay life. While probably not the intention of the early Buddhist tradition that formulated the five precepts, this lack of explanation does allow the fourth precept to be interpreted differently in different settings, e.g., in cultures which may have

9 EEP Essay #27 February differing definitions, understandings and attitudes about true and false speech. Without clear canonical explanations, when interpreting and applying the fourth precept, we must rely on some other source. One potential source is to borrow understandings from the Vinaya or from the brief sutta discussions of the ten skillful actions. Another source is for lay people to use their own reflection and analysis for how to apply the fourth precept to their lives. This latter idea suggests that to live wisely is to actively engage in ethical reflection. In the early Buddhist approach to such thinking entails carefully considering what is harmful and what is beneficial, what brings suffering and what brings happiness, and what is unskillful and what is skillful. Perhaps, for lay people, the lay precepts are prompts to grow in ethical maturity and in capacities for ethical analysis.

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