Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
What if a twenty year old wants to do something that is one in a million. Do you tell them that it is very unlikely that they will succeed. And give them negative chatter? Or do you let them follow their dreams and hit the moon if not the stars?
@how said:
Some story lines can be an agenda of misreading a commonly shared language.
Lies come in many forms.
Awfully cryptic there, How. Why not say what you mean so us spiritually deprived folk can catch your meaning.
Lies of self and our place in a tribe are both lies to protect ourselves. Lies to protect another can be for selfless purposes but are far less common. I said that** almost** all lies are self or tribe related because of this latter exception.
What you apparently left out is that the other being selflessly protected may not be in the tribe. I guess that makes a difference?
The equating of a social practice from a social group is just your own construct that you then criticize.
I didn't realize that it was a criticism.
I simply said that being truthful arises from loving truthfulness more than our protectiveness of self or it's social acceptance.
Have you ventured to think on why truthfulness has value? aside from the general notion that lying is inherently evil or whatever.
The point isn't about who has a story line and who doesn't, its about who's story line requires our lying verbal support and who doesn't.
I really don't see the difference. Someone asking for storyline support on the one hand, and on the other hand someone denying storyline support in order to support their own storyline (that of being a truth sayer).
I think holding information with intent to safeguard someone or keep a relationship is not the same as intent to lie for selfish reasons. If there is either selfishness or harm in the lie then you should question it.
We joke (a form of lying) to release the tension of 'the truth' and in that story we see the Truth in a more humane way . . .
We protect children and the psychically/spiritually fragile. In truth we lie to them.
I don't really talk to my cushion (OK who guessed?) nor am I a wer-lobster (no surprises there). In a sense I am weaving a tapestry to unravel. Even a picture is a lie or representation. These words that you are interpreting are not 'real' . . .
Everything is a lie. Only Mr Cushion can save us now . . .
@msac123 said:
One of the five precepts is lying, but I feel like you have to lie for someone's wellbeing. What do you think?
It might be in order to return to the OP.
In actuality there is no mention of lying specifically in the fourth precept followed by students of the Sutrayana.
What it says is MUSAVADA veramani sikkhapadam sammadyami.
' avada' is speech. 'mus ' however has a wider meaning than lying. It includes to dazzle, to beguile, to speak a falsity ( which is lying ) to intimidate,to obfuscate, to dismiss, to abuse, to speak in any way in other words, which is contrary to ' Samma Vaca usually translated as 'Right Speech'
Musavada is the opposite of Samma Vaca. And is defined by it.
So, much wider than lying.
The whole precept becomes;
' I undertake the rule of training to refrain from speech which is contrary to Samma Vaca '.
Samma Vaca is not a commandment setting forth abstract morality.
It is a mode of speech centred on not affirming wrong view, not affirming a separate unchanging self.
There is a real tendency among western Buddhists to fall back to seeing Panchasila ( ' the precepts ') as commandments rather than as upaya.. 'skillful means' intended to bring about a realisation of anatta and anicca.
Comments
What if a twenty year old wants to do something that is one in a million. Do you tell them that it is very unlikely that they will succeed. And give them negative chatter? Or do you let them follow their dreams and hit the moon if not the stars?
The truth is not always easy.
Awfully cryptic there, How. Why not say what you mean so us spiritually deprived folk can catch your meaning.
What you apparently left out is that the other being selflessly protected may not be in the tribe. I guess that makes a difference?
I didn't realize that it was a criticism.
Have you ventured to think on why truthfulness has value? aside from the general notion that lying is inherently evil or whatever.
I really don't see the difference. Someone asking for storyline support on the one hand, and on the other hand someone denying storyline support in order to support their own storyline (that of being a truth sayer).
I think holding information with intent to safeguard someone or keep a relationship is not the same as intent to lie for selfish reasons. If there is either selfishness or harm in the lie then you should question it.
My family tell the truth to a fault and it is a fault. The truth can be very hurtful and not all of us are thick skinned or transparent.
http://www.spiritual-wholeness.org/faqs/sources/holybudd.htm
We joke (a form of lying) to release the tension of 'the truth' and in that story we see the Truth in a more humane way . . .
We protect children and the psychically/spiritually fragile. In truth we lie to them.
I don't really talk to my cushion (OK who guessed?) nor am I a wer-lobster (no surprises there). In a sense I am weaving a tapestry to unravel. Even a picture is a lie or representation. These words that you are interpreting are not 'real' . . .
Everything is a lie. Only Mr Cushion can save us now . . .
It might be in order to return to the OP.
In actuality there is no mention of lying specifically in the fourth precept followed by students of the Sutrayana.
What it says is MUSAVADA veramani sikkhapadam sammadyami.
' avada' is speech. 'mus ' however has a wider meaning than lying. It includes to dazzle, to beguile, to speak a falsity ( which is lying ) to intimidate,to obfuscate, to dismiss, to abuse, to speak in any way in other words, which is contrary to ' Samma Vaca usually translated as 'Right Speech'
Musavada is the opposite of Samma Vaca. And is defined by it.
So, much wider than lying.
The whole precept becomes;
' I undertake the rule of training to refrain from speech which is contrary to Samma Vaca '.
Samma Vaca is not a commandment setting forth abstract morality.
It is a mode of speech centred on not affirming wrong view, not affirming a separate unchanging self.
There is a real tendency among western Buddhists to fall back to seeing Panchasila ( ' the precepts ') as commandments rather than as upaya.. 'skillful means' intended to bring about a realisation of anatta and anicca.