It is odd, isn’t it?

What your latest post brought up for me was a contemplation on the Dark Age. I began to wonder whether the lying and deception was as pervasive before the machine age, or before capitalism. Could it be that Buddhism doesn’t address lying more fully and directly because it wasn’t as pervasive and systemic in ancient India and pre-modern cultures, such as Tibet, than it has now become? I don’t know. But it does seem that our inborn ‘bullshit detector’ has been numbed and even disabled in modern culture.

When you say: “Everything, even gestures of compassion, can become tools for a personal agenda if it is decided that at some level dishonesty is an acceptable approach,” I am reminded of “The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis. It’s a 4-part, 4-hour series produced by the BBC about the mind manipulation of the masses that has gone on since WWII. It’s on Google videos: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151. It reveals in a vivid, dramatic way how lying (and thus corruption) became pervasive in the age of television, movies and advertising. It shows how “The Lords of Materialism have seized power.”

When you say, “If that level of honesty [as in 12-step meetings] were occurring in a community at large, regardless the theme, I bet they would have a subtle and vast effect on culture at large and would be inspiring people from all walks of life,” I do agree that that seems to have been the intention in the Vidyadhara’s vision of Shambhala. He emphasized authenticity and genuineness from the beginning in his presentation of Shambhala. I don’t see how we can have authenticity and genuineness without honesty!

I remember the precepts, have taken them on several occasions, and recall there is also the idea of confession, that one talk with an MI or someone we respect to admit transgressions to prevent ideas like ‘if they don’t know, I’m in the clear’ that sort of thing, though no one explained it as such.

At I believe the 1985 Seminary one could take the vows selectively. A friend said he would take them all except lying, so then he could do whatever he wanted. It was a joke, but it hints at the all encompassing importance of honesty. Everything, even gestures of compassion, can become tools for a personal agenda if it is decided that at some level dishonesty is an acceptable approach.

My point wasn’t that lying is somehow OK in Buddhism. I think it may be that if we’re not being honest we’re off in the bushes somewhere. Maybe it should have been: passion, aggression, ignorance, and lying? Anyway, lying is not discussed in the way almost everything else within Buddhism is. I’ve heard the other 4 precepts discussed at some length. Ego is broken down into thousands of facets, kleshas, döns, downfalls and antidotes, various types of suffering however ubiquitous or fleeting, various ways laziness arises and manifests all listed with causes results and disciplines to overcome them, Buddha families are thoroughly detailed with a pageant of qualities neurotic and enlightened, and abhidharma is renowned for it’s microscopic nanosecond observations and impartial detail down to the subatomic level of how mind works. The Buddhadharma is remarkable in its detail and experiential accuracy.

But I haven’t yet come across anything that relates directly with lying, the basic strategy of ego as you say, as something we have to work with, in terms of cause, results, antidotes, skillful means, or anything. There is only this reference via precepts that we just shouldn’t. It is like a black hole, a gap in the teachings. Your essay here may be more than you will find in Buddhism about this critical subject.

Considering how honesty is perhaps the thread which holds society maybe even culture together, this is odd.

Could this be intentional? Is there some good reason? Is it too obvious? I don’t know, but due to that gap, I looked elsewhere and found quite a few answers about things that were happening, things for which I could find no satisfactory answer within the Buddhist teachings. Lying is a case in point.

The Buddhist twelve step groups that were meeting in Boulder when I lived there exemplify this contrast. There was level of honesty and an understanding for how critically important that is, that I didn’t know I was missing until I encountered it there. It took me a while to figure out why I looked forward to and was inspired by those meetings. If that level of honesty were occurring in a community at large, regardless the theme, I bet they would have a subtle and vast effect on culture at large and would be inspiring people from all walks of life.

In the inspiration that teachings are accouterments to honesty and truth, not the other way around.

The heart of the book consists of 4 or 5 case studies of artists Miłosz knew (though he doesn’t reveal their names). All in all quite psychologically astute and as relevant as when it was written.

Re: whether lying is rarely spoken of in Buddhism, it is actually one of the basic Buddhist precepts, the fourth precept. They are: not killing or harming living beings; not taking what is not freely given; not engaging in sexual misconduct; not lying or using false speech; and not using intoxicants that cause us to lose mindfulness.

Thank you for the reference to Sissela Bok’s books. I think lying is the basic strategy of ego to justify its existence and its ignorance, and that is just as true on the personal level as on the collective level. As Rinpoche said, deception creates samsara. If we want to create Enlightened Society, we need to be scrupulously honest with ourselves and with others. That’s why we need warriorship: fearlessness in facing ourselves and being ‘true’ or genuine. All else follows from that.

Thanks again, James.

Suzanne

It seems clear to me, for example, that the first noble truth refers to perhaps the most deeply seated denial we have to overcome before bodhisattva activity can ever be genuine.

Trungpa Rinpoche spoke of this in several ways.

One is the cusp between hinayana and Mahayana, where our understanding jumps from one and a half fold egolessness, to two fold egolessness, the point at which some say we truly enter the path for the first time, everything up to that point being in some sense theater that points us in the right direction.

The point being, that although it is rarely spoken of directly, I think you are onto something seminally important that is truly Shambhalian in depth and breadth when speaking of honesty from it’s deepest meaning (the nature of ego and mind) to its outermost manifestation (being honest and open in the most ordinary sense), a theme for which it is virtually impossible to find a point at which one rule is applicable to spiritual practice and another for politics, not if our external activity is to maintain any connection to and an ability to express the absolute, i.e. to transcend ordinary samsaric activity.

In this vein, I would like to call attention to a couple of books by Sissela Bok: “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life” (1978), and “Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation” (1982). These are books that have absolutely no spiritual pretensions, but which end up touching on the nature of the path anyway, due to the nature of the subject.

In the introduction explaining why she did these books she explains that in her entire studies and career she never came across any explanation for lying. In the entire history of philosophy every minutiae of human existence has been studied: beauty, ugliness, why we like things, how we know things, meaning, ethics, what is love, on and on, but no one ever delved into lying: what it is, why we do it, why we think it is OK, why we think it is not, how it is used, the results and so on. Philosophers through the ages if they mention it at all say simply “it’s one of those things people do” and give it no further attention.

In these books Sissela decided to fill that gap and has given lying the full treatment, including chapters about how information is used, how people and secret organizations use withholding of information to maintain power, whether lying is ever justified (hardly ever), and some interesting chapters on the nature of gossip or the grapevine, whether it is healthy, how they poison or immunize society, and many other interesting facets about lying and truth, a theme we all have to deal with actually every single day, even if we don’t tend to think about it all that much.

In the inspiration that “Those with fantasy, have no need to lie.”
(Stanistaw J. Lec)

James Elliott

Re “Did Trungpa Rinpoche do much retreat?”, he did at least 2 one-year retreats (1978, 1984) during his 17 years in North America, plus some extensive ones (eg, Charlemont in 1972 I think), and of course that was preceded by years of intensive practice in Tibet, under some of the greatest teachers, till his “graduation” and entering into the action at age 19, and departure from Tibet.

But actually, you have no idea.

This page provides a glimpse.

Mark, please put a period or sentence break after Suzanne’s name on the RFS home page so it doesn’t read:
Commentary by Suzanne Duarte Hell is the truth realized too late.

Thanks.
Chris

The Vision Free from Frivolity

The sun has not risen out of impulse,
Nor has the moon.
For that matter Vajradhatu has not developed out of impulse.
The vision of Vajradhatu is entirely free from fear and impulse.
It is the product of careful consideration and wisdom,
And inheritance of the lineage.
So we keep expanding, continuing, maintaining our dharmic world that way:
We earned what we deserved.
Our exertion and practice are free from regret;
We will never change our mind.
Let us work together in this vast vision.
Please join us.
Thank you for your support and dedication;
Without that we would not have achieved what we have achieved so far.
But we have furthermore to go.
Let us proclaim the dharma in all the ten directions.

[VCTR, Kalapa Camp, Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, 17 January 1981, from the unpublished poetry]

Thank you, John Castlebury.

Suzanne